Region-Locked Content Drives UK Users To Try a VPN (itproportal.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new report has revealed that VPN usage in the UK has increased with almost one in six people now using a VPN alongside their internet connection. According to YouGov's 'Incognito Individual' report, 16 percent of British adults have used either a VPN or proxy server. This up-tick in users trying a VPN was often the direct result of trying access region-locked content or websites. Of those surveyed, 48 percent of respondents admitted to using a VPN or a proxy to access content they would otherwise be unable to view. VPNs are often used by security conscious individuals who are concerned with their privacy and not having their browsing data logged. YouGov's report found that 44 percent of VPN users utilised such a service for better security and that 37 percent did so for improved privacy.

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[pele]

Businesses that rely on geo locks? Those businesses should die off.
And secondly, there were no such things as geo locks on the internet 10, 20 or 30 years ago so why should there be now? As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all. What's this crap about?

Re:Re

[Baron_Yam]

> As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all.

Sure there were... they relied on the inconvenience of international delivery to allow for regionally-tiered pricing of physical media.

You may blame the distributors, but in a lot of cases they're not the owners of the IP, and may only have a distribution deal covering a particular region, or they've landed the distribution contract on the basis of the ability to achieve maximum profit on a per-region basis.

Ultimately, responsibility lies with a combination of the IP holders being greedy, but also with large wealth and cost of living disparities between different portions of the globe.

Re: Re

[Opportunist]

Then sell it to me in the US and let me worry about my local laws when I "import" the content.

Re: Re

[Falos]

You're putting the burden on whoever's in easy reach. Same shit as yelling at the messenger. Yelling at customer service to change something they don't have authority to access.

Meatspace operations are subject to those laws. Targeted operations are subjected to those laws.

I have zero obligation to put DRM or locks on my content published to the open internet. The "offenders" are the ones who get policed about their local laws.

Oh but it's hard to find out who's doing what? I don't care. You're the ones who wanted unenforceable laws about movie content or weird porn or whatever. You enforce them. Not me. Not google or cox or netflix or apple or windows or whoever.

Re:Re

[tepples]

As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all.

At the time, the home video business broke the world into NTSC vs. PAL vs. PAL-M vs. SECAM vs. MESECAM.

Re: Re

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I live in Europe (Poland) and while I do perceive German/French governments as "leftist", I enjoy much more freedom than those who live in USA.
Movies here do not have to conform to puritan tastes of east-coast zealots (if there is one thing forbidden -> fascist/nazi symbols; that's one thing you can have in USA that you can't in Poland (unless it is put in certain context... which is debatable; but hey, it's easy to understand that we don't want PR of a group that tried to eredicate our entire nation));
We do not have to deal with software patents (yet...);
We have laws that try to protect me from too much coroporate greed (e.g. there are forbidden clasuses, a working anti-monopoli body, etc.), so in my backwater backward poor country with 1/nth of your GDP per capita I have better telephony and internet plans (because government regulation (unlike mythical "free market") of telecoms enables competition).

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[lalleglad]

I agree with most of your comparisons to the US, but I would like to point out, as I am from another EU country, that Poland together with Hungary have your own set of problems with regard to free speech and democracy.

Bull

[nospam007]

Most users use a VPN in the UK to access the porn, that the ISPs must block by law.

It's a bit of a stretch to call the region-blocking.

Re:Bull

[rizole]

I've never had problems accessing porn but have had problems accessing some media without having to find work arounds.

Don't know of this porn block by law my ISP has that you talk about. There's a setting or check box I had to select to opt in if I recall correctly but then most ISP's used to have "family" filters you could opt into anyway. It's a minor difference in practice and I still get the same ol' filth down my tubes.

Re:Bull

[JamesKeane7745]

You think you cant get porn on the internet in the UK? Are you sure you are thinking of the UK, rather than Neptune?

The Peter Pan tax

[tepples]

Say there were a country whose law stated that anybody reproducing, importing, or exhibiting a copy of a film adaptation of Peter Pan in that country must pay a tax, and this tax made it unprofitable to offer the film for all-you-can-watch streaming. Would that mean the law is shit? Or would it mean that all-you-can-watch streaming in general is shit?

It turns out that there is such a country, by the name of Great Britain. Its Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act recognizes a right to a royalty payable to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSH) for derivatives of the stage play Peter and Wendy, as if the play were subject to a perpetual copyright with a compulsory licence.

Play globally or gtfo

[sixsixtysix]

If some people get use the whole world to lower their costs via cheap labor, then the surely, people can use the whole world to find the cheapest/easiest to access content. It's 20-fucking-17. Play globally or gtfo.