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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."
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.
You know, it sort of made sense in the pre-internet days where you had only terrestrial broadcast and cable (and then eventually satellite). There, you had people with infrastructure, etc. in a country and you licensed your content to those entities to broadcast. Now it is a holdover. But, those broadcast entities still exist. They haven't been driven out of business yet. So they still license the content. And they complain like crazy if a streaming service based in another country is allowing that same content to be shown in "their" area (where their physical broadcasts can be seen). They say, "you'll put us out of business as nobody will pay us for our connections or broadcasts if you show the content we licensed over the internet". To which I say - Exactly.
It is time for channel based content to go. Who cares what channel or network the content they want to watch is on or even from? They just want to watch say Big Bang Theory or Orange is the New Black or whatever. It no longer needs to be on at a "time" on a "channel". But the old way of distribution is still pretty well entrenched at least for a little while longer.