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Netflix CEO Says Blocking Proxy Services Is Maturation of Internet TV (mobilesyrup.com)
An anonymous reader writes: During a recent round table discussion, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings commented on the company's controversial move to begin blocking the use of proxy VPN/DNS services. "We have the obligation to respect the content rights that we buy; it's just a simple fairness thing. Someone else has paid for the rights in Germany, so we should respect that, just as we would expect the same in return," he said. "The basic thing is if we license a movie here [the U.S.], and then another network licenses it in Germany, then we don't have the rights to display it in Germany. That's why we have to enforce those VPN rules, just like Amazon Prime Instant Video and others do as well. Think of it as the maturation of Internet TV."
Enough said
With any new technology, stuff is relatively free. People who make stuff are left alone to make it, and the stuff that is made is shared. Popular work is encouraged, and less popular work continues on a hobby basis. But then someone rich realises that they're not getting even richer by sticking their nose into this new technology. So they waltz in and say, "Hey, this is disrupting the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed - that lifestyle involving my collecting money from people without actually DOING any further work." And for a while people point and laugh and say, "Who is this old man, coming into our playground and wagging his finger and telling us what to do?"
But this old man has money. And money buys two things: it buys land, and it buys ears. You can buy a lot of the playground, sure, but you can't scare everyone off it, otherwise your playground was useless. So, you buy ears. You convince people who were playing happily that they should be ok with playing differently - in particular, playing in such a way that the old man gets a cut each time you play a game. It's your moral duty. Go on, pay the man.
And then the playground is mature.
I understand that for the time being they need to follow geolimits posed upon them from those licensing out the content. Hopefull this will mature too. Hollywood is still stuck in the old days in regards to distribution.
But the simple fact is that. 15000 titles in the US, compared to around 3000 titles where I live, is not worth the price they are asking.
Lower the price so match the amount of content and it's fine. But paying the same as the US with 1/5th of the content. No.
When not at home it's really only sensible to use vpn to use the web. You know: to keep our web access private in a public place. So, Netflix does not want us to use what we paid for --- except at home? What?
Or they could just move to a non-exclusive licensing model.
I saw a chart somewhere and basically there is 0 incentive to subscribe if you're not in North America unless you have a VPN to make it appear that you are.
Why does my geographical location determine whether or not I'm allowed to access the content I paid for? If I buy a physical book or a DVD, am I not allowed to read or watch it if I travel to another country? Of course I am. Why is streaming video different?
As for licensing deals: as a consumer, I don't need to know any of that; that's not my problem. And if different countries have different laws, that's fine - but it's not Netflix' job to enforce them.
always gonna lie. Always gonna lie.
The internet is global, so just buy the distribution globally and sell a global product, rather than just giving each country just enough as you can get away with!
US Netflix > Any other country Netflix.
One could say that, "as a matter of fairness" Netflix "has an obligation" to refuse to accept geographically-limited licenses. Anything less is disrespectful to the viewers. Think of it as the maturation of Internet TV.
Or we could realize it's not about "fairness" per se but about the fact that copyright holders who have pushed for consistent, long-term, and international copyright terms don't want to in "fairness" also have consistent, long-distance, and international copyright licensing that doesn't even allow for grey markets precisely because such an idea is, well, insane. I mean, what part of "and my work created in the US has a copyright term of 50+ years in Germany" goes hand in hand with "and no one in Germany can legally import my work for sale unless I say so"? It's in the same scope of insanity that says, "I get to sell you n-copies of a game on n-different platforms"* but "a person can't buy n-copies of my game, make whatever modification they like, then resell n-modded copies as clearly modded versions of my game".
No, we're not talking about "fairness" in the "it's fair to the public". It's more "fairness" in the "if we start ignoring the German holder's licensing terms, they might do the same to us and that might be bad for business". The "fairness" of inherent collusion in a trust, sponsored in no small part by government backing. Yep, all sorts of "fairness" in those words.
* Admittedly, not the perfect example (as porting like translation can incur a noticeable additional cost) but even in that scope we would reasonably expect that people should be able to pay for the porting cost and not the whole work again. Especially as many times there is minimal porting cost or there's emulation that would make it possible for the user to "port" the game to their platform of choice. Which may or may not be legal, depending on the original form of the media you purchased (cartridges being generally illegal to copy if nothing else because the cartridge copier is often illegal) and whether your local law defines some notion of "personal use" to spell out the legality of such a thing. So, yea, not really something copyright holders have pushed for making standard because to them, any even small burden to the user is a barrier to entry to encourage going through official channels and official channels have a team of lawyers per country who can write off the cost as a part of doing business.
Netflix wants to remind you they are not your friend. They are not a non-profit citizen advocacy organization. They not interested in net neutrality because it is essential to a fair and open public communication infrastructure. They are a for-profit company, no different than Comcast or AT&T. Now that they have "matured", get ready for the same "shut up and pay your bill" treatment.
With the VPN workaround Netflix offered a good deal with its 6000+ titles worldwide, but now without it I get a mere 1600+ titles in The Netherlands. As much as I dislike geofencing, that could still be a good offer because Netflix adds (and removes) titles periodically, but only if the price was adjusted accordingly. But now I am paying slightly more than an American customer, for a third of the content. How is that fair?
I switched from commercial television channels to Netflix, but without access to the much larger US catalogue its offering is starting to lose its shine. My VPN connection still works fine with bittorrent though, but I doubt that this is the effect the content owners want to see.
They're enough of a threat to TV networks they get harassed into fixing problems that aren't really theirs, if they deliver to a US-registered IP that should be the end of their responsibility. This is just a policy of appeasement while hopefully kicking them to the curb, it's a global market and you sell to the whole world. It's called globalization and you're only like 50 years behind the times.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'll just have to block Netflix from accessing my credit card.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Here's a better solution.
Just create a blacklist/whitelist per title instead. If a title is "available worldwide, except Germany" then just block Germany from that title, don't block it from the entire world except the US. It's completely insane sometimes that if you subscribe to netflix and you get the same B-list movies worldwide, but get no movies made in the last 5 years outside of the US.
Fuck region restrictions. Fuck geo-locked content.
There is literally zero point to them but ripping people off.
And not even in a good, business sense way, this is WAY out of the realms of actual business sense, this is just pure retarded.
Region limits only serve to lose profits.
Thanks Netflix, for caving to those asshat companies.
Now that you have blocked me from viewing some stuff, I will just pirate those things you geolocked me out of that will never be shown here.
I will HAPPILY pay for content, but I will not bend over backwards and take a big dick in the ass from retarded TV industry execs that WANT TO LOSE MONEY.
Fry is not happy at all.
Reed Hastings is trying to say that Netflix can only do business by playing by the rules that the TV networks and content producers write. Those groups want to maximize their profit, and so does Reed. If they refuse to do business with Netflix without geographically-limited licensing, Netflix can either say goodbye to customers or agree to do it.
As the head of a public company, Reed doesn't have a choice. I would at least hope that Netflix itself only licenses on a global basis and doesn't engage in geographic limitations.
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
Making the new model just like the old one so its easier to control. :(
What bullshit!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
And I like to travel.
Your system of "intellectual property" is broken beyond repair.
You mean turning it into the same sterile medium that television is? When do the commercials start?
Just Torrent the shows instead. It's cheaper, more convenient, and more reliable. Piracy: A truly global media delivery service.
At the risk of coming off like a cranky, digital-age hermit, I increasingly feel like I'm just done with this shit. The more big companies try to entrench the value of their product, the less value it holds for me. When you just let me have the thing I paid for, we can remain on good terms, but when you place a higher premium on locking things down than you do on the experience of consuming them, I start looking for alternatives. Now, I'm not even that disappointed when I can't find an alternative. The hassle reduction I experience by canceling my sub and being done with it, outweighs the satisfaction I'd have gotten by consuming your stupid fucking content. Good riddance.
The problem is regional licensing. Geographical borders don't really mean much to a medium which can circle the globe in 0.13 seconds. It may have made sense back in the days when books and film took months to transport across oceans by ship, but not anymore.
There is no reason for geoblocking other than greed, and probably misguided, self-defeating greed at that.
There is no legitimate administrative logistics or whatever reason for restricting content access over the Internet to certain locations on Earth.
It is a totally artificial barrier, exactly akin to a highwayman stopping you on the road and demanding the contents of your pockets and your watch.
Don't you think in this day and age that if all people around the world were treated as having the same rights to content, that much more revenue in subscription fees for decently stocked, well-organized, high-performance content services would come in? Of course it would.
We're seeing the death throes of a dying buggywhip business model.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I like paint.
In other words, you're working hard on making it as irrelevant as old school TV has become, and for the same reason?
*sigh*
Back to torrents, folks, 'til they get it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, will Netflix pro-rate my monthly bill for time I spend on travel to foreign countries?
I'm kind of doubting it.
I have immediately subscribed when they became available here in my European country. During the first month I have seen all programs from their very limited list that I am interested in.
Then I have canceled. There are lots of other programs in their worldwide catalog that I would like to see and that I am willing to pay for. See, I am not interested in most of contemporary movies or series. I was interested in documentaries. Sadly, those are not available here.
I am not going subscribe until there are enough programs for me to watch for at least a month.
In the meanwhile I got motivated to have a look at the cable selection I am subscribed to. I have made some changes and I am happy. I am not interested in paying for History Chanel and similar channels that used to have quality programming and that feature mainly reality shows nowadays.
Came here, was disappointed that noone else read that as "Masturbation". /me goes to grow up.
The basic principle in the EU is the free flow of products and services.
When they are taken to court on this point Netflix will loose.
I use a Swedish VPN simply so that my kids can watch cartoons on Netflix in Swedish. The content is not much different between Belgium and Sweden on Netflix, so I am basically doing it for the language option. If there was a way to split contract-obliged geoblocking and localization that should definitely be done!
It pains me to have to point this out, but it seems as if the weekend anti-copyright knee-jerk brigade is out in force today. What Hastings was roughly saying appeared far from shocking or outrage-provoking.
Obviously, if they don't want to be in breach of contract Netflix are legally obligated to abide by the covenants of whatever agreement(s) they've entered into with content owners. He's merely saying this to appear to do what they expect his company to prevent, this in order to keep securing more licenses for their content; and further he adds that he's very aware of what customers want, only it's going to take time to reach a universal licensing model. Except for programs they fund themselves, one would assume.
I mean, who are we kidding here? Obviously, with them using around 37% of the entire Internet's bandwidth as of 2015 stats, one would think that Netflix is keenly aware that it's just a pointless exercise of whack-a-mole, but the balding pointy-headed head of the licensing department at 19thCenturyFax might not quite be as savvy with technology, and could actually believe that the VPNing can be stopped. (in reality, none of them are dumb enough to assume something so silly, but their point simply validates the low-hanging fruit theory to get maximal return for a small investment of time and resources.)
If people are serious about using VPNs, then they'll have to put in a bit of extra effort and spend a little more to get a reputable provider that will not fall victim to their pruning of the cheap or free VPN services. Again, nothing terribly earth-shattering here. One could therefore remark that it would seem reasonable to save the indignant tone for actually important things.
I think of it as I cancelled my Netflix subscription so don't care.
I use VPN for privacy. If Netflix doesn't like this, they don't need my 8$.
I have had several long acrimonious conversation with the chat bots that Netflix calls customer service and have come away extremely disappointed. 1) Netflix doesn't care that your a US citizen and your VPN gives you a US geolocation. This is too sensible an approach I guess. They also turn a deaf ear to the 'vpn use for computing safety' argument. 2) Netflix doesn't have an email address that you can send complaints. They like postal mail when hearing from customers. 3) I have lodged complaints to both the FTC (no response) and FCC (a stretch, but they've seemed consumer friendly of late, also no response.) 4) To date none of the netflix chat bots can point me to a terms of service that allows such denial of service. This long after they've started doing it makes me think they are afraid of putting it writing for fear of the consequences. 5) I've been considering a small claims action. Since it's not in the terms of service, a breach of contract claim might work.
The sensible thing is if you license it in USA, or Germany... or wherever, you can use it wherever you want.
I can see torrent and Usenet traffic increasing at the expense of Hulu and Netflix.
Netflix did a dirty one on the proxy and Vpn providers and customers. They opened pandora a box . They can't close it now. For 5 years they gave the world netflix. The Vpns and proxy services advertised for them and made Netflix a known household name. Now that Netflix is worldwide they saying Ok thanks for your help but now we restricting you. It's too late Netflix. Either people will cancel subs or there will be another competitor who will do the same as you guys did and lax region restrictions. Or pirating will prevail. You brought it on yourselves .
I was using HMA to watch the US Netflix from the UK but since it's been blocked I'm using DNS to get around the issue.
A simple Google search will help you find totally free DNS servers - not the paid ones. That's all you need to do.
I was watching Netflix via a VPN routing me through a data center in Los Angeles, the same one that I route all of my non banking traffic through. It's not a small data center, so its address ranges are well known. As a result, Netflix stopped working for me about 10 days ago.
At that point, I had a few choices. The first was to go looking for a different data center. I actually know of one (on the other side of the country) that I used to use, but since I had stopped using them for a reason, I took a pass. There's also the fact that it only be a matter of time before that IP range as well winds up in a block list.
So, option B it was. The first thing from Netflix that I was interested in since this happened turned out to be Marvels.Daredevil.S02.720p.WEBRip.x264-SKGTV
There's also a 1080p version, but an upscaled 720p works fine for me. It downloaded in about 30 minutes, and I'll be watching it at my leisure.
Bottom line: if you want to fuck with me, I'll gladly tell you to go fuck yourself. I'm sure you're not missing my $9 a month, and I sure as fuck don't miss you, Netflix.
There are major victims in terms of false positives and Collateral damage. Entire apartment complexes, even IP blocks get blocked. I work as a phone rep for Netflix, and the company policy is strict about not troubleshooting the problem. Were asked to refer customers to ISP, but there's not a shred of information about what exactly the ISP can do. There's no standard out there that an ISP can conform to, and no transparency about why the VPN error message is triggered. It's bullshit, and it's not an industry standard as we're instructed to say.
That depends on the % of people that were using a VPN/proxy in the first place. Unfortunately, Netflix is big enough to not care about a few % of users.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Because, heaven forbid I be a US citizen traveling abroad who simply wants to access the content he's paid for.
Fuck me and my selfish, unfair self.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We had a good run, but the things you have available in my country are not worth it. And it is not even the expensive shows I am interested in, it's documentaries etc. I would think those would be easier and cheaper to license globally.
For some reason, I don't even watch much TV anymore, haven't had cable in years. My Netflix usage has also been less and less the last year so it is not a huge loss.
Youtube:
This video is unavailable.
Sorry about that.
No problem, Youtube, I know you wanted to play it, but it's not legally possible now.
Thanks for the other tons of content.
Keep up the good work!
A viewer.
The notion of geographic location is not required for the internet to work, it's merely used as one method among many to make the most money by charging more or less in different markets (Like market skimming). It has nothing to do with maturation of any technology or industry and has only to do with commercial imperatives.
Is it just me, but i know Netflix has thousands of shows but most are absolute garbage. Its like the content providers are keeping the good stuff and netflix is simply buying nonsense to has no value. How many shows do they buy from nobodies who produced a movie or documentary that was made in little more than an afternoon with a few people as opposed to real professional productions. The documentary section of Netflix is a perfect example, its utter garbage, the purchase value of those shows cant be worth more than $10.
I wouldnt be suprised if the content providers have strangled NF passed the point when they have to really try to block otherwise they wont get proper content.
Copyright was never meant to be used as a tool for censoring content, on the contrary, it was meant to promote the arts. So copyright should have an exception for works not made available. If the copyright holder decides to withdraw a work, then it would be automatically free for anyone else to copy and distribute. After all copyright is a monopoly, but if the holder decides to not peruse that monopoly then it should be open for anyone else who my want to publish it. Under said directive we would have:
1. Old books that are out of print because the original publisher decided they are not worth it would be free to be printed by any publisher.
2. Old software and games (abandomware) would be automatically free to copy by anyone.
3 Copyright wouldn't be used for censorship. Unfortunately nowadays we have many cases where the copyright holder, for various reasons, uses its monopoly do censor. That wouldn't be an option anymore.
4. And the relevant to the current discussion: Works that are published somewhere else, but not published/available on country A would automatically be free on country A. After all citizens of a country shouldn't be punished if the publisher doesn't want to make the work available there.
This sort of crap pisses me off. We live on Earth, not in some imaginary made up fantasy land of divided boundries. We need to come together and sabotage geolocation, otherwise we might as well be living on Mars.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
The big issue is that for someone in the US it is impossible to buy rights from Germany to stay with the example given, for a consumer that is. I'd love to see more German shows, but geoblocking prevents it. I'm nor arguing that everything should be free, but everything should be reasonably accessible at a fair price. As far as Netflix goes, their foreign content section is sooo dismal. That was the main reason I dropped their service. The free on demand channel from my TV provider had a better selection than Netflix. Come to think, it is more the other way around. Folks in Germany want to see what is available in the US. So maybe it is Netflix's own content that they want to see protected by all means to maximize their profits. Ahhh....now I understand.
I would just stop using Netflix and start using torrents again. Same thing with YouTube and some of their videos, just use a proxy. Geoblocking should be illegal.
Actually I'd really like to know what % are using VPN/proxy! before Netflix launched in Australia there were about 500,000 users!
Make the same content available for all countries and people wouldn't have to use proxies. Half of the content on American Netflix isn't on Australian or European Netflix. If the content was available for all countries using the netflix service rather than favouring the US then there would be no issue expect may be a small price increase per month for users. I don't like watching the same stuff over and over again, variety is needed and so is an extension of content.