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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

#161

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...

Netflix doesn't "own" House of Cards.

Media Rights Capital "owns" House of Cards, Netflix distributes the show. Even then MRC's rights are probably limited because they bought the rights to the concept from the BBC who originally did House of Cards as a mini-series.

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

#162

A lot of people seem angry about the geo-blocking, and I would agree with the sentiment, but can anyone tell me why Netflix is geo-blocking so heavily? Companies don't do things for no reason...

Because content producers are threatening to remove their support of Netflix.

Which is what I thought...so why the Netflix hate? Shouldn't we be instead be getting angry at the copyright holders essentially exercising monopolistic control of the market?

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

#163

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 think the reply would be... why do you feel entitled to consume content that you didn't create, in the first place? You had the choice to stop watching... and thats the only legal choice. To pretend that doing something illegal because you feel entitled to it is right, thats a little bit... childish?

Illegal is not immoral; copyright is a legal construct designed to reward content creators for their works for a limited period of time before it enters the public domain. Our history, culture, and heritage is a fabric of works created by individuals that enter the public consciousness. If you co-opt culture and won't offer it to people through legitimate means, don't be surprised if they go to the frictionless and better value proposition of copying information from the internet without permission.

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

#164

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...

> 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.

Another case in point: House MD doesn't have Massive Attack's "Teardrop" as the intro theme anywhere outside the US.

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

#165
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How I solved this problem. Bought a $5 DO instance, which gets me a personal ip that is located in the states combined with OpenVPN I can watch Netflix and do many other things that are US only.

Does this still work? I have a pptp server up on one of these for Netflix, and I'm getting negged. Should I just rotate the server onto a new IP?

I hear that using an ssh socks tunnel currently functions.

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

#166

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 think the reply would be... why do you feel entitled to consume content that you didn't create, in the first place? You had the choice to stop watching... and thats the only legal choice. To pretend that doing something illegal because you feel entitled to it is right, thats a little bit... childish?

Because people at other countries can pay and see the content freely, but we foreigners can't do it, no matter if we want to pay for it. Netflix just says to us: "sorry, we don't want your _kind_ here. Keep your money and go somewhere else". (I am also in Switzerland).

Technically, if you own a restaurant, you can refuse to serve anyone, they are not entitled to your food and service. But try to selectively refuse service to African Americans, or gays, or Canadians, or Swiss, or all non-Americans, and see where this road will lead you and how much time you'll get until first lawsuit.

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

#167
post #155

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 time, I wanted to watch Game of Thrones legally – from Germany. The rights are with Sky Online, a 10 bucks a month subscription service. Sounds good in theory. I signed up and then: - I had to wait 25 minutes for the activation email - I activated my account, but it wouldn’t let me access my account settings for another 25 minutes - then I had to install Silverlight (I’m on OS X) - then I tried to start the stre…

Not only that, but the media players available let you use downloaded subtitles, in some cases automatically fetching them.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because content producers are threatening to remove their support of Netflix.

Which is what I thought...so why the Netflix hate? Shouldn't we be instead be getting angry at the copyright holders essentially exercising monopolistic control of the market?

[deleted]

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because content producers are threatening to remove their support of Netflix.

Which is what I thought...so why the Netflix hate? Shouldn't we be instead be getting angry at the copyright holders essentially exercising monopolistic control of the market?

Isn't everybody already?

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

#170

Piracy has always been a convenience problem and only partly a cost problem. Pirating content is the easiest, fastest, highest quality, and most available method of watching content. The price is just a nice bonus. Digital restrictions hurt everyone and maybe one day Hollywood will wake up and realize that you can't strong-arm the market into behaving how you want it to and you have to adapt to consumer demand. It's…

Yep -- I want to watch tv shows on the night they come out so I can talk with friends about them the day after. Nearly every per-episode-purchase vendor lists them the day after (most likely because the networks that air the shows require them to wait). It's dumb, and all it does is push me away from paying them more than they'd make on advertising from me anyway.
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