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After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

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Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#61

I am an English person living in Switzerland. Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.). Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us. This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or do…

This blows my mind. How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their own show in Switzerland? I understand their hands are sometimes tied in getting content from the studios, but they own House of Cards... I'm so confused how they could end up in that situation...

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#62
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many users on the same IP, IP is registered to a cloud hosting company, etc. They'll never have perfect detection but you can do pretty well without much effort.

Startup idea, airbnb of VPNs. Normal people distributing a limited number of other peoples, VPNs for a small fare.

won't work. Netflix does not simply blocks IP, I'm pretty sure they detect behavior from account, and then locks them when the behavior looks like a VPN user (country hopping, etc.)

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#63

I am an English person living in Switzerland. Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.). Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us. This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or do…

This blows my mind. How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their own show in Switzerland? I understand their hands are sometimes tied in getting content from the studios, but they own House of Cards... I'm so confused how they could end up in that situation...

Simple: They sold exclusive rights in quite a few countries to TV networks before they expanded there.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#64
post #19
post #13

Regional rights agreements are really slowing down the move of TV to online. Publishers say "well, we already signed these agreements with these TV companies, so we can't let this shows be streamed online in those countries". TV companies say "well, we only got the rights to broadcast on TV, so we can't stream the show online in this country". Hopefully as the popularity of online streaming increases, new contracts w…

> Hopefully as the popularity of online streaming increases, new contracts will take online streaming into account more. There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online, but I'm sure they'll continue as long as the companies want to get more money ...and hopefully Netflix will survive until that time.

Just a note the spaces in front of your quote completely breaks it on mobile which sees:

> Hopefully as the popularity of onli

And can't scroll to see the rest.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#65
post #29
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing you to. Plenty of folk have Netflix for access to favorite classics or TV series when they have time to. New titles are only added value for them.

In Spain Netflix has a VERY limited classic (or contemporary for that matter) catalog. Is only worth paying it for series IMHO.

That's going to vary wildly from country to country depending on what deals they're able to actually get for content. In the US it's pretty good for watching old shows.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#66

I am an English person living in Switzerland. Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.). Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us. This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or do…

Similar thing happened to me. I'm British living in Sweden. Not only is the selection poor it also does no contain English subtitles for anything; which is frustrating when trying to watch foreign movies.

So I turned my NAS back on and cancelled my subscription.

I'm happy paying content providers, I really am. I visit the cinema, buy DVDs and even songs on iTunes. But if you stop me or hinder me to the point where piracy is a significantly easier option (Or only one illegal option when there are only illegal options) then I'm going to do it.

(This is slightly annoying however because there is a rather large "netflix" button on my new TV remote.)

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#67
post #58
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Bell/Saw/Rogers having their own streaming services? I've found Bell's Crave TV to be pretty good, Shomi not as much.

Crave TV has great content, but they have been very frustrating for me technically. Random drops in the stream, session cookies getting corrupted (they only recently allow password changes from their site).

Agree with that 100%. Any time I've had to use web/iOS apps for Crave, I've wondered what is up with Bell Media's software people. The TSN app is just as poor, especially compared to what Rogers' Sportsnet app is doing on iOS.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#68
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind. How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their own show in Switzerland? I understand their hands are sometimes tied in getting content from the studios, but they own House of Cards... I'm so confused how they could end up in that situation...

Simple: They sold exclusive rights in quite a few countries to TV networks before they expanded there.

Not disagreeing, but it still seems odd as the Netflix Original Content is the big carrot to get people hooked into their ecosystem.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#69
I've been rather stunned at how no one has come up with a strong workaround to this yet. It's really quite simple, we just need slick, easy-to-use software for it.

Make software that both turns your home computer into a single-user VPN server, that lets you set the maximum upload bandwidth to ~5mbit/s or so, and lets you only pass through Netflix content; and also gives you a VPN client that lets you connect to another's computer and only uses the VPN for Netflix content, allowing your web browser and everything else to continue working through your regular ISP. The whitelisting eliminates the traditional concern of someone using your connection for torrents or worse illegal content. The bandwidth limiting ensures smooth QoS for your own network. Latency here is not a concern at all ... it's streaming video.

Once you have this software, it's simply a matter of setting up a message forum somewhere where people say, "I am from 'country X' and want to watch content from 'country Y'", and waiting for someone in the reverse situation to come along. As long as your connections are always-on, this works perfectly.

As an alternative to the fact that more people will want US Netflix than any other region, people could also offer server-only access for nominal Paypal fees. Eg lease out a 5mbit/s link for $10/mo. The price would naturally follow supply and demand.

I can change my IP any time, and there is no possible way Netflix can ban my hostmask as a VPN (all of Time Warner Cable in Columbus, Ohio.)

And if this forces Netflix to start charging by billing region ... good!! Now we can offer services that let people pay for the regions they want to access! Or if they try and block that too, then perhaps people sharing VPNs can share their account logins next.

Either way, this is a cat-and-mouse game with a very clear end-game. Why the hell is no one working on this problem? There are millions of people affected by this VPN block nonsense.

On that note, I have a US 300/20 connection I'd be happy to share, and I can do the software the hard way with BSD/pf. Is there anyone with an always-on JP connection that would like to trade with me? I would also be willing to pay someone for a residential ISP VPN connection in Japan, which I would use exclusively for Netflix only. I'd really love to be able to use Netflix Japan again; it's helped a lot with my listening comprehension in studying the language.

(Side note: this proxy software wouldn't have to be just Netflix. It could be a wonderful anti-geolocking system. The major VPN and VPS models are clearly detectable and blockable. This could allow fine-grained whitelisting or blacklisting and decentralization of VPN services.)

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#70
post #52

What exactly does Netflix stand to gain from making it harder for its non-american subscribers to VPN the geoblocked content? Surely they must have predicted a substantial drop in subscription rates as soon as people realize they can't watch the good stuff. It just seems like international-marketshare suicide.

The deals they've signed with companies allow them to distribute shows X, Y, & Z in say the US other companies have the rights to that same show in Canada or the UK. Netflix can't just distribute the copyrighted content wherever they want and keep the media creating companies they rely on for content coming back to renew deals.
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