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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

#81
post #76
post #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 anoth…

Or: go to private tracker, hit download button, wait 60 seconds. Don't pay $10/mo to some random, don't pay $10/mo for HD netflix subscription.

In my case, it's much more difficult to find Japanese series. Japan isn't nearly as big on file sharing as we are. Anime, sure, but I'd like to watch things with real people too.

Example: try finding the live action version of Nobunaga Concerto [信長協奏曲] (not the anime that's readily available.) Now I'm sure someone here can do it. But look at its seed ratio compared to say, Game of Thrones or Last Week Tonight. And this is a really easy case, because it's being streamed subtitled from Crunchyroll. Now imagine the difficulty of series not conveniently subtitled into English on major streaming services already.

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

#82
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix doesn't own house of cards actually, it exclusive rights to it in some countries in others it doesn't.

Since it is a production of them, is seems utterly moronic to remove one of the main reasons people would join their services in the first place. Many non-us customers joined, just to cancel the account right after they realized that they had no access to the good content. In some cases this is not the fault of netflix, but that of 19th century copyright laws. I cannot blame them, when other services had the rights p…

The problem comes from the original BBC House of Cards. Netflix doesn't actually own the rights, they're licensed from a company called Media Rights Capital.

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

#83
post #41

We're in Canada and have been cable cutters for almost five years now. We've gotten by on Netflix US and YouTube with the occasional pirated streaming site, but we're barely ever using Netflix anymore. We've turned to Kodi. We don't want to pirate, but it's hard to make a compelling argument against it when you get everything you want even easier than torrents. Add to that the abusive monopolies of Shaw and Bell, who…

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.

you mean besides the obvious conflict of interest?

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

#84
Netflix really screwed up with House of Cards. They should be able to take the high ground and say:

"Don't get mad at us, they're making us do it. We're leading by example, maybe someday everybody will realize that regional restrictions are a bad idea."

But their licensing and handling of House of Cards prevents them from taking the moral high ground.

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

#85
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it is a production of them, is seems utterly moronic to remove one of the main reasons people would join their services in the first place. Many non-us customers joined, just to cancel the account right after they realized that they had no access to the good content. In some cases this is not the fault of netflix, but that of 19th century copyright laws. I cannot blame them, when other services had the rights p…

The problem comes from the original BBC House of Cards. Netflix doesn't actually own the rights, they're licensed from a company called Media Rights Capital.

Netflix funded production, so would have had strong leverage over MRC's relicensing. We can't see the contracts, but I'm fairly confident that Netflix would have had at least right of first refusal for rights for any region.

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

#86
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.

May I ask what you don't like about Shomi? Is it the content?

The technical delivery is poor. Hiccups, corruption, and drops in service are pretty common :(

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

#87

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…

I'm not familiar with unblock-us. Would a VPN service work, or have they figured out how to block those too? I would imagine that to do that, they'd have to keep lists of IP addresses associated with the VPN services they want to block.

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

#88
post #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 anoth…

You've more or less invented Hola Unblocker with a few limits

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem comes from the original BBC House of Cards. Netflix doesn't actually own the rights, they're licensed from a company called Media Rights Capital.

Netflix funded production, so would have had strong leverage over MRC's relicensing. We can't see the contracts, but I'm fairly confident that Netflix would have had at least right of first refusal for rights for any region.

Leverage only goes so far. Since it was originally a BBC show ~20 years ago, chances are that country-specific rights were sold off long before Netflix got involved.

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

#90

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…

I'm not familiar with unblock-us. Would a VPN service work, or have they figured out how to block those too? I would imagine that to do that, they'd have to keep lists of IP addresses associated with the VPN services they want to block.

They block anything they can detect as a VPN, which is a pain in the arse, because I don't want to browse at all without a VPN, so I can't use netflix at all any more.
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