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Netflix Geoblocking Loosened Under New EU Law (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "The European Parliament is now finalizing legislation which will allow EU residents to access their paid subscriptions for online media -- such as video streaming, games and music -- while visiting other EU countries," reports The Stack. Under the new rules, companies will not be able to arbitrarily block subscribers from accessing the content catalog of their home countries while visiting other parts of the European Union, with country of origin to be established by various possible methods besides IP address, including payment details, public tax information and 'checks on electronic identification'. The issue was brought to a head last year when Netflix began blocking the known IPs of VPN providers, often used by subscribers to access the catalogs of their home countries while travelling.
I guess that's one way to put it. I'd say most people use the VPNs to access content blocked in their home country, and it sounds like this order actually harms that since your country remains the same regardless of your physical location(or your VPNs physical location).
While this is all correct: it doesn't matter at all.
Netflix already has to do all this on top of the geoblocking they do in order to make Hollywood happy.
So stopping one of the two reasons why they block different things in different countries is still a win. Only one blocking reason instead of two.
its funny how some of these companies attack trump but then go around geolocking all their shit,
It is not Netflix; however. It is entertainment companies who license content differently in different jurisdictions either to maximize their profits, or to distribute their profits across multiple vacade organizations in order to minimize tax liability.