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Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

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Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#41

Post by twoodfin »

Freak_NL wrote: post #36
revelation wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? If you have US billing, you can only watch the US catalog, and you need a US IP, right? But that's fine with the OP, that's why he is using his friends broadband anyway. The US catalog is what you want.

> Huh? If you have US billing, you can only watch the US catalog, and you need a US IP, right? From what I understand you get to watch the content of the region you are in at the moment. So on holiday you lose access to your home catalogue, but actually gain access to the catalogue of the country you are in at that moment. This seems to be part of how these region limited contracts with the content owners work. The t…

That matches my experience, at least in recent trips to the UK, Belgium & Germany.

Netflix did think I was using a VPN and blocked me from one rural German hotel, though.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#42

Post by dorian-graph »

planetjones wrote: post #19

I know that it's not Netflix's fault per se and they're under pressure from the dinosaurs running the media companies. However really well done - you're now leaving people with no choice but to torrent again.

They have the choice to not torrent and not watch whatever content.

They don't _have to_ watch it.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#43

Post by izacus »

lol768 wrote: post #10

My solution to this was to pay a friend in the states to share his residential connection. I'd like to see them try and block Comcast's residential blocks. There's potential here for a middleman to write software/develop hardware that can share residential connections whilst filtering destination IPs (e.g. allowing AWS addresses) to try and minimize the potential for abuse with the goal of discouraging traffic other…

Note that content providers (Sony and others) consider that copyright infrigement on the same level as torreting the movie.

And when torrenting the movie you don't have to jump through all those hoops, it'll always be available and never block or just stop in the middle of playback.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#44

Post by statsknowitall »

awqrre wrote: post #34
beisner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix also tracks which region you're accessing data from, which means that if you live in Croatia and your billing info states that you're in Croatia but you're consistently switching back and forth between accessing US Netflix and Croatian Netflix, they can still tell that you're circumventing the region system despite using a private VPN.

So you need one Netflix account per region? (to avoid that particular method that Neflix is using)

No, you can watch the content of whatever region you currently inhabit. Just like there is a different set of shows on TV while you are on vacation in Spain, there is Spanish netflix on the internet (dumb old media contracts).

If you use technical means to pretend to inhabit another region, they will try to stop you as the article describes.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#45

Post by techsupporter »

What bothers me the most is that Netflix declared Hurricane Electric's Tunnelbroker service a VPN. I have IPv6 on my home network via HE.net and, since Netflix is a good network citizen and supports IPv6, I can't watch on my computer or any other device that also talks v6.

My household gave up our Netflix subscription in lieu of giving up IPv6.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#46

Post by geodel »

Huh, people put blame for their piracy on Netflix as if they are suppose to take moral responsibility for pirate's actions. Just like people have freedom to not watch content they do not want to, rights owner should have freedom to not show content to those they don't want to.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#47

Post by Spivak »

awqrre wrote: post #34
beisner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix also tracks which region you're accessing data from, which means that if you live in Croatia and your billing info states that you're in Croatia but you're consistently switching back and forth between accessing US Netflix and Croatian Netflix, they can still tell that you're circumventing the region system despite using a private VPN.

So you need one Netflix account per region? (to avoid that particular method that Neflix is using)

If you're planning on technically circumventing region locks then you, apparently, need an account with a valid billing address in that region to avoid this form of detection.

If I were actually meaningfully affected by this change I would just drop their service and get my content from my peers. It's honestly just not worth the effort.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#48

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

dorian-graph wrote: post #42
planetjones wrote: post #19

I know that it's not Netflix's fault per se and they're under pressure from the dinosaurs running the media companies. However really well done - you're now leaving people with no choice but to torrent again.

They have the choice to not torrent and not watch whatever content. They don't _have to_ watch it.

You are correct.

However, the purpose of copyright is to encourage cultural development, not enable cultural rent seeking. The latter is merely the mechanism proposed to do the former. To the extent the latter doesn't encourage the former, we should completely disregard the artificial construct of the latter.

I would argue that media companies have made this shift: Disney is no longer using the profits from copyright to enrich society with new cultural content (see very limited number of new properties), but is instead consolidating cultural control and rent-seeking (see studio/IP purchases, remakes and sequels). We should simply disregard their copyrights for as long as they continue this behavior.

Copyrights, after all, are fundamentally a deed from the public to a company or individual in exchange for a (future) service. If the company fails to render the service, the deed is revoked, and the property redistributed for better public use.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#49

Post by biot »

pixld wrote: post #2

Any ideas on what technical means Netflix is using to tip the scales in their favor?

I'm sure there are some wonderful technical solutions involving statistical analysis, measuring velocity (user connects from country A, then 10 minutes later connects from country B; flag the IP address), and so on.

But there's a much simpler solution with no chance of a false positive [0]: Netflix spends a few dollars signing up for each advertised VPN service, then they instantly block any IP address that the VPN service attempts to route them through.

[0] As long as legitimate Netflix customers aren't sharing their connection with the VPN provider.

Re: Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out

#50

Post by joshontheweb »

This is pretty annoying but I will say that I still get my moneys worth out of watching international netflix. All of their original titles are available across all regions and they are coming out with new stuff at an increasing rate. When we really want more we just rent a movie on the apple tv every once in awhile.
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