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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

#111

Post by CamperBob2 »

guiomie wrote: post #79
lostgame wrote: post #48

I ended up having the conversation with a co-worker...I live in Canada, and anyone who lives up here can back me up on the fact that this country is just awful with regards to its copyright litigation with regards to television, especially. It's far, far easier for me to pirate content than it is to legally buy it. Until that's the case, I'm not interested in forking over my money to be inconvenienced (and this is co…

Wait, you are justifying an illegal action of yours because it is easier than the legal route? Since when doing the right thing is and should always be easier... So, do you also not pay income tax because it is much easier to not do so? There are countless examples where being illegal is easier over legal, but as a society some of us understand that if the majority respect the law and order, we are much better off. I…

Wait, you are justifying an illegal action of yours because it is easier than the legal route? Since when doing the right thing is and should always be easier.

The "right thing" and the "legal thing" are not always the same thing.

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

#112

Post by drspacemonkey »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #101
drspacemonkey wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would the licensing of the old shows have anything to do with the licensing of the new shows? MRC licensed the name and concept from the BBC. That license would definitely not be regionalized.

It's likely impossible to say without having insider knowledge. Perhaps somebody with international IP law could weigh in.

But it appears there's an added wrinkle. Back when the show started production, MRC sold off rights in countries where Netflix didn't yet operate. CanalPlus in France and Sky Deutschland in Germany managed to get exclusive rights in their respective countries. Netflix is trying to get the rights globally, but they can't force anyone to sell them anything.

source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-subscribers-eu...

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

#113

Post by OSButler »

nicolas_t wrote: post #59

I still can access netflix through the VPN I use. As long as I still can do that, I will keep my account. The second they block it, I'll cancel my netflix account and will go back to resorting to piracy. If movie studios don't want my money then so be it, I'll find better use for it. EDIT: And I say this as someone who spends roughly $100/month supporting artists I like on Patreon and Kickstarter, so I'm not opposed…

Their blocking seems to be quite aggressive, as a lot of regular hosting providers even had their IP ranges blocked by them. I've been following a few forum posts where people were sharing their working VPN provider/ISP, but those were showing the same error message a few days later, so it looks like they are actively monitoring traffic and maybe even social media to block further IP ranges.

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

#114

Post by CamperBob2 »

pessimizer wrote: post #100
zamalek wrote: post #15

The same effect is occurring in South Africa. People I know are switching back to piracy because our Netflix catalog is probably in the region of 10% of America (for the same reasons, as well as others). After years of not being able to legally access some copyrighted content, with no discussion and no change, I honestly don't see the copyright holders backing down - strange considering that they are the only ones ac…

The copyright owners aren't losing anything. They're trying to maximize profits, not sales.

That couldn't be farther from the truth, unfortunately. If they were trying to maximize profits, they would focus on providing reasonable ways for everyone on the planet to give them money.

Instead, what production companies try to optimize is the funding used to create the content in the first place. They sell the rights as many times as they can, in as many different markets as they can, in order to finance the production. They are then required to enforce region restrictions to live up to the foreign distribution contracts they signed.

The fact that this ultimately results in lower profits hasn't yet occurred to these idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H creative geniuses. It brings in more cash up front, which appears to be all they care about.

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

#115

Post by travelton »

byuu wrote: 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…

This solution likely won't work because Netflix would do this:

A) Tally up all the Account IP relationships. B) Perform an analysis on # of accounts per IP that exceed predefined thresholds. C) Scrutinize accounts who are using an IP that is swarming with accounts from other countries.

Total cat and mouse, but can be automated quite easily.

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

#116

Post by rchaud »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #104
thinkMOAR wrote: post #37

Wonder when the first person stands up and claim this is blatant racism/ discrimination. Because it literally is. 'oh you come from this country and you have netflix? -- oops then you cannot see because you are canadian/european/ whoever' Media copyrightrights per country, its 2016 its insane release your media globally or don't release it at all.

It sure is how it feels. Facebook trending: look at this awesome SNL clip the world is laughing and talking about! Click on it, oh sorry, you can't watch this in Canada, but hey, the rest of the world that matters can(read: the US), so yeah, good bye. Any content provider that blocks you out based on your location makes you feel discriminated against and it sucks! I like how Netflix says that we are very vocal, but m…

I don't agree that that's the case. To me, region-restrictions for US content (the most popular worldwide) present a massive opportunity for content creators not based in the US to make something that is in fact truly globally available. While it's true that US TV and movies have been globally popular since the time of their invention, the rise of YouTube, Vine, Instagram etc. show that global audiences can be developed without needing to be US centric.

Your comment "this awesome clip the world is laughing and talking about" refers to SNL, but there are examples of viral videos that didn't originate from a big-name US studio. "Charlie bit my finger" and "Gangnam Style" are two examples. I don't think it's too much of a stretch that English-language long-form content (30-60 minute series) can be developed without having a "Made in America" imprimatur on it. Danish crime shows are popular in Europe and the UK, while Korean dramas are extremely popular in East Asian markets. Indian cinema is also popular in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. A small slice of British shows like Made in Chelsea have carved out a niche in English-speaking markets like the US, Canada and Australia.

I hope production studios large and small across the world are seeing this as an opportunity to expand past their borders rather than simply continue "Business as usual" under the protectionism offered with these types of restrictive licensing rules.

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

#117

Post by OSButler »

byuu wrote: post #81
dijit wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Oh yes, I'm constantly clashing with unavailable/blocked Japanese content. Crunchyroll has quite a bit of non-anime content to offer, but it's still far from other country specific streaming sites.

The oddest thing for me are the constantly blocked Japanese music videos on Youtube. I'm not talking copyright infringing content, but music videos published on the official band/performer's channel and being viewable from within Japan only. Why is a music video blocked outside of Japan, when you can buy the song via the regional iTunes store? One would assume that a music video is meant to promote the music sales, so why are so many of them blocked outside of Japan then?

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

#118

Post by joshuacc »

sgift wrote: post #30
themartorana wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been well explained to me how this is a profitable model, especially considering the ease with which popular shows are pirated - in full HD and digital sound I might add. What do studios really stand to gain by keeping Germany et al from so much content?

They sell it over different channels (Amazon Prime, DVD, etc.) and somehow seem to think that people will use more than one to get all content they want. They probably do this to get better rates from Netflix, e.g. "You know, if you don't pay us x we can always give our content someone else". To me this sounds like madness, I would never use multiple streaming services, but I'm not an Hollywood exec, so maybe there i…

FWIW, I regularly use Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. In the past I would also use iTunes.

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

#119

Post by mschuster91 »

kennywinker wrote: post #61
planetjones wrote: post #35

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...

> How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their own show in Switzerland?

One often-overlooked point is soundtracks. This is why there's no official Cold Case DVD/BD set - it would be prohibitively expensive to license all the music for distribution outside of TV.

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

#120

Post by OSButler »

user10001 wrote: post #11

Hollywood movies are such shit these days, I wouldn't even watch most of them for free.

US Netflix has a decent collection of Korean movies for example, where new movies have been added on a regular basis for the past year or so. It's just that the Hollywood content is most prominently displayed on the home page, but if you know what you're looking for, then there may be a few worthwhile sub-categories available for you on Netflix.
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