Netflix Begins Blocking Users Who Bypass Region Locks 121
An anonymous reader writes with reports that Netflix may be shutting out international VPN users. "Netflix can only stream the videos that studios make available in a given country, which has led to a booming business in workarounds (such as proxies and virtual private networks) that let you see the company's catalogs in other nations. Heck, one New Zealand internet provider practically built a service around it. However, you might not get to count on that unofficial solution for much longer. VPN operators claim to TorrentFreak that Netflix recently started blocking some users who use these technological loopholes to watch videos that would normally be verboten. The effort isn't widespread and mostly appears to focus on connections with many simultaneous Netflix sign-ins (that is, they're obviously being used for circumvention), but it's a surprise to viewers who were used to having unfettered access."
It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:5, Informative)
It's dupe-l-licious! [slashdot.org]
Well, OK, this "story" has an additional linky to engadget...
Netflix really does have to do this, their business requires the licenses and cooperation of the Media Mafia, who could snuff them out if they chose. There would be lawsuits, but Netflix would be essentially over.
I don't know much about why there are such restrictions, do they charge different amounts in different countries? Shouldn't it all be pretty much the same, money-wise? Is it an issue of censorship based on the particular country's politics?
Re:It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:5, Funny)
It's dupe-l-licious!
This version is tailored for different region.
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This version is tailored for different region.
As long as Slashdot doesn't block my VPN, I'm golden in all the regions!
Re:It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot uses a more insidious form of "soft-blocking" where rather than being outright blocked, certain users are redirected to beta.slashdot.org.
Re:It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot uses a more insidious form of "soft-blocking" where rather than being outright blocked, certain users are redirected to beta.slashdot.org.
I thought that "cruel and unusual punishment" was against the Geneva Conventions [wikipedia.org].
Re:It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that "cruel and unusual punishment" was against the Geneva Conventions.
You are right. It is against the conventions. But if we have learned anything from the patent system, it's that "cruel and unusual punishment on the Internet" is different enough to be allowed (and quite possibly patentable).
Not Netflix? (Score:2)
From the Engadget linky [engadget.com]:
Update: Netflix tells us that there's been "no change" in the way it handles VPNs, so you shouldn't have to worry about the company getting tough any time soon. With that said, these blocking errors started showing up in the past few weeks, so it's not clear what would have prompted them.
If this is the case, could it be that the Media Mafia are working with various ISP such as Time-Warner and Comcast? Or perhaps even the owners of the backbones?
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No. It's the case of Netflix lying to the media...
Eventually detectable, and so extremely unlikely.
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Re: It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:1)
I don't know if you pay strictly for content "in your country." When I travel Netflix offers me content in the region that I am in at the time. If I only paid for content "in" the US then when I arrive in another country it should say "sorry, you are out of the region you have paid for, come back soon!" But instead it offers me the local Netflix content.
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I don't know much about why there are such restrictions, do they charge different amounts in different countries? Shouldn't it all be pretty much the same, money-wise? Is it an issue of censorship based on the particular country's politics?
It's all about the licenses. Most of the time a TV station with deep pockets buys the rights for a region for a given timeframe from the producers. And they wouldn't be too happy if you could binge watch a whole season on Netflix before they had time to show all the episo
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Re:It's Dupe-L-Licious! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a case of the content owners punishing paying users. The un-blockers are all paying users. The pirates aren't. The content owners are making more pirates, and refusing the money of paying customers. And wondering why their business model isn't working.
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And wondering why their business model isn't working
I doubt it, their business model is making them $quillions, I don't think they give a flying fuck if it works for you and I.
Groundhog day! (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent. Today, I think I'll learn to play the piano, master a few vintage Atari arcade games and hit on Andie MacDowell.
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What I would give for the chance to hit on Andie Macdowell...
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And I think I'll learn an ancient language, pottery-making and juggling, play some golf and ride a bicycle.
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And I think I'll learn an ancient language, pottery-making and juggling, play some golf and ride a bicycle.
That was one of the best episode of SG1 beside the 100 and 200 episode where they made fun of themselves.
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I also liked War of the Coprophages [wikipedia.org] on X-Files.
I'll never understand those that pay to be pirates (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it was stupid for people to go out of their way to pay for 2 services (VPN/Proxy and Netflix), one of which views them as pirates.
If you're gonna be viewed as a pirate by Netflix, save yourself the trouble and pirate the content right away at no cost. Because if you circumvent for whatever reason the restrictions and pay you're still considered a pirate by Netflix and the MPAA. In this case being honest doesn't pay.
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:4, Insightful)
They do, but you aren't their paying customer, the entity which buys the distribution license in your country is their paying customer. If you can access an American service to view the content, why would anyone other than an American business buy the distribution license?
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:5, Insightful)
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And when the global license prices adjust to compensate?
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Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, because there aren't other considerations in play. I mean the actors, composers, producers, graphics designers, musicians, etc. involved in the production of a movie all have a uniform contract that discusses world wide steaming over the Internet. It isn't like there is a shitload of legal legwork involved in releasing movies for streaming.
They're mostly work for hire or to receive a percentage of the gross (if they're smart) or the net (if they're stupid), you don't renegotiate those contracts per country. That would be extremely fooling since the movie is already made, you'd give everyone involved the chance to ask any price they want. The problem at least in the early days was that many movies and series were sold with exclusive distribution rights often down to the national level due to the traditional broadcasting networks. That means Netflix can't go to one company and ask for rights, they have to sub-licenses from many different entities. For newer material this is changing, typically the production company keeps the online streaming rights and only promise to not exercise them while it airs. Of course they still want to gouge Netflix as much as they can, but it's not the same fractured landscape of rights as it used to be.
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Or if they're very smart, they just get paid up front... Have you any idea how few people actually get "gross"? And gross still usually means gross of distributor revenue, minus exhibition fees, which is to say, after Netflix has taken their cut. Nobody who merely works on a movie gets first-dollar gross.
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They're mostly work for hire or to receive a percentage of the gross (if they're smart) or the net (if they're stupid),
Or if they're very smart, they just get paid up front... Have you any idea how few people actually get "gross"? And gross still usually means gross of distributor revenue, minus exhibition fees, which is to say, after Netflix has taken their cut. Nobody who merely works on a movie gets first-dollar gross.
That's all covered by "work for hire" which is why I put it first, whether it's up front, on delivery, per hour, fixed fee or whatever. You get paid an agreed rate, they get all the rights. Makes a lot of sense too, if you're not in a position to make any creative input or deliver an acting performance that'll affect the audience then it's not your achievement if it's a success or your fault if it bombs.
Which is good, because Netflix adds nothing to the actual value chain for new titles. It's just a subscription Video-on-Demand service, except ON THE INTERNET! (...) I'm just speaking as someone who occasionally gets paid contractual gross in deferred deals. Netflix and VOD pay-through never remotely comes close to market rate for my work. I think a lot of the "streaming" business models are sorta scams, particularly for new filmmakers, they can't come close to generating the revenue theatrical and TV distribution can, and Netflix is sorta bluffing people on wether or not they can actually generate the revenue to sustainably create new original content.
Theatrical distribution is its own thing, but for TV you're arguing both for and against "on the Internet
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You can get pid grosses work-for-hire; work-for-hire doesn't necessarily mean "all up front." It just means the copyright is under the corporation's name. Almost everyone above the line is "work-for-hire," the only exception is a spec script, and even those writers will generally agree to designate their work as for-hire.
The difference for Netflix isn't so much the Internet aspect as much as its the revenue model. They charge a flat r
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In Denmark it's not illegal to bypass country restrictions.
So if you pay for Netflix and uses VPN / SmartDNS / What ever then it's not against the law.
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:5, Insightful)
In Denmark it's not illegal to bypass country restrictions. So if you pay for Netflix and uses VPN / SmartDNS / What ever then it's not against the law.
Which doesn't mean Netflix will allow VPN in Denmark. Netflix's actions almost certainly have little to do with "law" and everything to do with being leaned on bu the Media Mafia.
Re:I'll never understand those that pay to be pira (Score:5, Insightful)
how about because they AREN'T pirates. It is perfectly legal to bypass geo-blocking in many countries. e.g. Australia. Why do we do it, because the local services are shit and even with the cost of the VPN + Netflix it is still cheaper than the shit local services.
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actually no he isn't considered a pirate by them either. Netflix is quite happy with this scenario, they even happily tell people how to do it. Piracy is about accessing content you are NOT paying for, they are paying for the content. The only people upset are the media companies and local distributers, but under no scenario is it piracy as it is all perfectly legal and not in breach of any copyright laws.
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Pirating implies that a person "use[s] or reproduce[s] (another's work) for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright."
That is... not the definition of piracy that almost anyone uses. No profit needs be involved with content piracy/unauthorized sharing/copyright infringement/whathaveyou.
Unless you're counting "not giving money to the owners of the media you use" as personal profit, a definition that most content sharers would not want to embrace.
Um, they just want to use Netflix. It adds value (Score:4, Insightful)
to the media by making it easy to browse through, search, access, and stream.
And they're paying regular price.
We live in a very strange world when "piracy" has gone from "armed crews of criminal specialists seizing tonnage shipments of goods on the high seas with cannon and sword" to "a regular schmo paying the regular price to use a regular product in the regular way in his regular living room."
Hard to believe that the word still retains any of its negative connotation at all.
"Piracy" these days sounds an awful lot like "tuesday afternoon nothing-in-particular with tea."
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the signs of the rot were there when they went after DVD Jon for having the audacity to provide a work around so that he could watch DVD's he'd legally bought on his own personal computer that just didn't have their blessin [bbc.co.uk]
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Um, they just want to use Netflix. It adds value to the media by making it easy to browse through, search, access, and stream.
I'd counter that you're not getting what you paid for when it comes to Netflix streaming, as Netflix's streaming selection is absolutely horrible and gets smaller thanks to media company shenanigans.
The one exception being Netflix's original content available only through Netflix streaming. Supposedly they're high-quality, and available only through Netflix, so I could see a number of people trying to access it through VPNs for that reason. Do House of Cards or Orange is the New Black have any region restri
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Imagine a Netflix subscriber who lives in the USA, then moves to Europe for work reasons.
Unless they use a VPN to appear to still be accessing from the US, they'll lose access to certain shows.
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Re:Hello, Netflix! (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix doesn't have a choice here; they get most of their content from licensing deals and likely were pressured into this by those providers.
The best thing you could do is support netflix and watch their original programming, so they can make more and cut out the established Big Content providers. (Until Netflix becomes one and we move on to the next new thing.)
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There are rights issues as well.
Re: What's the motive (Score:2)
Usually they sell the rights to a property to different distributors in different jurisdictions. So in Australia, "Diff'rent Strokes" might be exclusively licensed to Throw-Some-Stream-on-the-Barbie and now here comes Netflix, 'offering' the same content to VPN users there. The idea of 'jurisdictions' and geographical nexus requirements for digital data is stupid, but blame the 12th-century concept of laws still being applied to the Internet if you want a root cause.
Re: What's the motive (Score:4, Interesting)
Shit like that is why everyone runs to VPNs.
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Have a look at what happened in Australia regarding Game of Thrones. The most recent season was purchased by foxtel as an all formats exclusive. So even iTunes started blocking Aussie users from buying GoT.
Basically if you wanted to watch GoT in Australia you needed a minimum of a $75 per month contract with Foxtel. What actually happened was it set new records for people downloading it from torrents.
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The idea of 'jurisdictions' and geographical nexus requirements for digital data is stupid, but blame the 12th-century concept of laws still being applied to the Internet if you want a root cause.
It doesn't really have much to do with the Internet, other than the Internet is the easiest way for anyone to show content to a global audience. The two biggest reasons (there are others) for geographical restrictions:
1) Different purchasing powers in different countries and different currency exchange rates. Folks in especially poor countries can't afford US$15 for a DVD, and since the reproduction costs are so low, a media company can set what they'd consider a "fair price" related to wealth of the area.
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It's Foxtel and Yahoo!7/Ninemsn/Ten, (and the other similar players) who are the instigators here.
Re:Cat and mouse... (Score:4, Funny)
Netflix is obligated to do this to maintain its licensing agreements with the Media Mafia. But it will always be a "cat and mouse" game...
Why is Torrent Freak's logo hot pink?
Dupe!
Solution, streaming server, .torrents (Score:3)
Switched to .torrents and a streaming device long ago. Being 100% honest is no longer workable. I will buy copies of the blu-rays and go to the movies. However when viewing is desired a downloaded blu-ray rip @ 720p is obtained and I put them through a streaming device (tivo+pytivo works well).
Owning the content in box form should entitle one to access to that content but this is simply not the case - the content providers are way difficult to deal with.
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Leaving aside the issue that how things *should* be is rarely how things actually are, and trying to pretend that one lives in that person's view of an ideal world when things are not actually as they would like is only going to end in disaster, that is nonetheless
If only there was a way for Slashdot editors (Score:4, Insightful)
To coordinate and block duplicate stories.
Its like they don't even talk to each other.
"Hey do you think this is a good idea for the front page?"... "Nah it was submitted yesterday..."
And in fact it was submitted to /r/technology on reddit like a week ago... Slashdot has become the last piece in the chain for news - which is sad because it puts it below Facebook.
Re:If only there was a way for Slashdot editors (Score:5, Informative)
To coordinate and block duplicate stories.
Its like they don't even talk to each other.
Shit they don't even have to talk to each other. All they Have to do is LOOK at /.
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It seems to all be automated,
I guess the system picks one or two stories from news.ycombinator.com that seem to be trending more than the others.
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What's Reddit?
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/. is slow and old news compared to others like Reddit these days. Remember when Reddit, Digg, etc. didn't exist and /. was the place to get the news? :(
VPNs aren't only for bypassing region limits (Score:5, Informative)
Often they are used to bypass the decidedly not net-neutral treatment of Netflix by your ISP.
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I do like watching Dr. Who without the 30 minutes of commercials that BBC American subjects you to to watch 60 minutes of Who.
And I like free stuff too!
I'm all for Americans getting to see Doctor Who if they want to pay a reasonable price for it and/or view adverts. But you're not paying for it through your license fee, so really, you don't have the right to expect them to show it to you free of charge *and* without adverts.
If people in the United States have a big problem with this, they're welcome to push for a publicly-funded broadcaster using a similar license-based model (or any other model, I don't care how they pay for
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I love watching/listening to stuff on the Beeb, so all it took was renting a 128mb vps with 500GB/mo transfer from one of the many UK vendors, putting OpenVPN and a squid proxy and voila! I'm now in the UK and the Beeb lets me catch all the great stuff they stream... The vps costs me a whole $25/year..
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It's worth noting that unlike Hulu/Netflix/iTunes, Auntie doesn't go out of her way to block people who take even basic measures to bypass geo-blocking.
For example, on Firefox I use the Modify Headers addon and an "X-Forwarded-For" entry with the Beeb's own IP address. (212.58.246.94) There are other addons that make it as simple as clicking on a flag. Bit easier than screwing around with VPNs or DNS spoofing.
dupe (Score:3, Informative)
perhaps they could also show Slashdot how to block dupes.
"We've reached out to Netflix" (Score:3, Insightful)
We've reached out to Netflix to verify what it's doing
Urgh... this makes me think of that famous bash.org quote. [bash.org] Seriously, why the **** are Engadget using this obnoxious phrase instead of simply saying "we've contacted Netflix" or something similar?
It's the current favoured stock weasel-worded pseudo-touchy-feely (but in fact, insultingly off-the-shelf) bullshit phrase corporate PR use to sound like they *suddenly* give a f*** about a pissed-off customer they're having to contact, er... "reach out to" in response to some massive PR disaster they didn't expect.
But why would a "proper" news source feel the need to use the same irritating phrase when *they're* not the putative offending party on the defensive, but rather the people investigating the problem?
Unless this is an example of the phrase "if you lie down with dogs [i.e. hang around too many PR weasels], you get up with fleas".
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There may be a case for a short and snappy phrase intended to concisely convey the meaning you describe, but f*****g "reaching out" sure as hell aren't the words I'd have chosen to do so.
Netflix was coerced (Score:3)
Hollywood bullies Netflix [arstechnica.com] into implementing draconian DRM.
But like any abusive relationship they're too afraid of losing their sugar daddy to speak out against it in public.
From the leaked Sony emails: "Netflix are heavily resistant to enforcing stricter financial geofiltering controls, as they claim this would present a too high bar to entry from legitimate subscribers. For example, they want people to be able to use various methods of payment (e.g. PayPal) where it is harder to determine where the subscriber is based. They recognize that this may cause illegal subscribers but they (of course) would rather err that way than create barriers to legitimate subscribers to sign up."
Yeah, right. I'll consider Netflix "heavily resistant" to draconian DRM when they launch a PR campaign publicly skewering Hollywood for asking for it.
Instead this leaked email tells us only that in private they're mildly uncomfortable with draconian DRM but at the end of the day they don't really give a shit and will fall in line in public for The Almighty Hollywood.
Keep taking those beatings, Netflix. Keep doing your abuser's bidding.
If Netflix were actually serious about this.... (Score:2)
This won't necessarily stop people from trying to get bogus billing addresses to get around this, but that's the cre
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What you are describing would be equivalent to a landlord who owns adjacent houses on a block splitting his cable line and running it into to the neighboring house without paying for two subscriptions.
It's pretty conventional address fraud, actually.
Although the chances of your friend would get caught doing this for you with Netflix are probably virtually nil, as long as he doesn't do it for anyone else...
And bear in mind that not everyone will necessarily be willing to let other people who do not l
Setting up your own VPN? (Score:2)
So how do I go about setting up a home router with a VPN exit point, for my own personal use while traveling? I've seen some of the various *WRT and other router firmware packages with VPN servers, but I have never managed to get one to work. Couldn't tell if I was messing something up on the router, or on my laptop / mobile phone client, or it was some firewall I was hitting at my hotel or hotspot I was connected to (although my university's VPN usually would usually function properly, so I don't think t
This will break with firewalled dns, Oh joy. (Score:1)
I have firewalled dns as a security measure. One hack is to point someone at a foreign dns server bad guys control. So I guess I am off to another provider if they do this. Disappointing.
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Informercial (Score:2)
Where the problem really is (Score:1)
Hardcoded DNS server (Score:2)
From the other summary [slashdot.org]: "The Android application started to force Google DNS which now makes it harder to use DNS based location unblockers". So if it's directly accessing 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8, it'll ignore your hosts file.