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to TOPDAWG
Re: Netflix Cracks Down On VPN & Proxy Pirates.said by TOPDAWG:I signed up for a US netflix account ages ago to use the bookmarking no idea why it's not on the cdn one yet. As Guspaz mentioned, it is there for Canada too, but it's only visible for your home region. So a Canadian with a Canadian subscription using a US VPN (or travelling in the US) won't be able to see the feature. |
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 maartenaElmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA |
to TwiztedZero
said by TwiztedZero:Over the past weeks Netflix has started to take action against people who use certain circumvention tools. The Android application started to force Google DNS which now makes it harder to use DNS based location unblockers, and several VPN IP-ranges were targeted as well. Read More: CRACKDOWN!So you're paying Netflix Canada, but using a VPN to watch Netflix U.S. -- oops, not anymore ... Yikes. It would appear that they aren't blocking anyone yet. Hulu has tried to do this in the past, and ended up blocking all sorts of US servicemen that live off-base in e.g. Germany and South Korea and use the local infrastructure to get internet access to them and their families, and use VPN's not only to access television, but because it is recommended by the military for secure communication (as they can't always trust whether local authorities aren't snooping in on them, wherever they are deployed). Those kinds of things generally don't go over very well in the press, anything that hinders US servicemen is generally a no-no.  |
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AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON |
AsherN
Premium Member
2015-Jan-5 5:00 pm
said by maartena:said by TwiztedZero:Over the past weeks Netflix has started to take action against people who use certain circumvention tools. The Android application started to force Google DNS which now makes it harder to use DNS based location unblockers, and several VPN IP-ranges were targeted as well. Read More: CRACKDOWN!So you're paying Netflix Canada, but using a VPN to watch Netflix U.S. -- oops, not anymore ... Yikes. It would appear that they aren't blocking anyone yet. Hulu has tried to do this in the past, and ended up blocking all sorts of US servicemen that live off-base in e.g. Germany and South Korea and use the local infrastructure to get internet access to them and their families, and use VPN's not only to access television, but because it is recommended by the military for secure communication (as they can't always trust whether local authorities aren't snooping in on them, wherever they are deployed). Those kinds of things generally don't go over very well in the press, anything that hinders US servicemen is generally a no-no. But are they using military supplied VPNs or commercial one? There is a big difference. Once traffic exits the tunnel, you can't tell it was in a VPN. What Netflix is banning is know public addresses of commercial VPN providers. |
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to TwiztedZero
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if netflix gives in at some point provides content based on the registered account country rather than geo location. |
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said by JAMESMTL:Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if netflix gives in at some point provides content based on the registered account country rather than geo location. That would break things when someone was traveling. Lets say you're a Canadian subscriber, and you travel to the US - you might be able to access content that's only licensed for Canada while you're traveling (yes, there are some programs available in Canada but not the US). Same would hold true for a US subscriber traveling to Canada. |
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JAMESMTL
Premium Member
2015-Jan-5 5:26 pm
I recognize that, however the Canadian has paid licensing fees for the Canadian content, not the US content regardless if he is traveling or not. This is how it works with services such as rdio.
Worse case scenario would be a combination of account information and geoblocking which would lock out travellers not using VPNs terminating in their countries of origin. |
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 El QuintronCancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna |
said by JAMESMTL: I recognize that, however the Canadian has paid licensing fees for the Canadian content, not the US content regardless if he is traveling or not. This is how it works with services such as rdio. Blocking traveling users would be a foolish endeavor, especially in Netflix's case. The traveling user could simply create a trial account in the country of their choosing, cancel when they leave and Netflix then gets $0 dollars for their service. It's much simpler to allow users to roam with the single account, I think both the MAFIAA and Netflix realize this. |
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to JAMESMTL
said by JAMESMTL:I recognize that, however the Canadian has paid licensing fees for the Canadian content, not the US content regardless if he is traveling or not. This is how it works with services such as rdio.
Worse case scenario would be a combination of account information and geoblocking which would lock out travellers not using VPNs terminating in their countries of origin. As far as I understand when Netflix signs the deals, they are based on region distribution and not the particular user. So for them it is legal to provide any Netflix user the corresponding content to where the user is physically located at any given moment. They intentionally provided this ability to US and Canadian Netflix users a year or so ago. Again though I will say trying to do Geoblocking is physically impossible since there is nothing correlating physical location other than what it says on a database somewhere. |
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 jmckformerly 'shaded'
join:2010-10-02
Ottawa, ON |
jmck
Member
2015-Jan-5 10:34 pm
geolocation per country is probably at 99% accuracy. where it fails is when new IP space gets assigned to an ISP and it takes time for databases to update. |
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That assumes it is an ISP that will be submitting accurate records. If someone took an IP block and put in a US address (which has been done before), the geo databases would simply assume US unless someone could actually check the location. Just an example but IP assignments are not necessarily correlated to country, it is assumed. Just like when using a VPN they are only able to assume that the actual user is in that country based on the IP address at the serving end of the VPN tunnel. |
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jmckformerly 'shaded'
join:2010-10-02
Ottawa, ON |
jmck
Member
2015-Jan-5 10:55 pm
it depends entirely on the quality of the geolocation database. they aren't all done by simply form submission or scraping WHOIS. for example Akamai collects BGP sessions from thousands of ISPs and maps things itself. |
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El QuintronCancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna |
said by jmck:for example Akamai collects BGP sessions from thousands of ISPs and maps things itself. Do you know if Akamai actually sells these statistics to Geoblocking firms? I largely regard Geoblocking firms in the same way I regard parasites like Canpire, the only reason Netflix needs to hire one of these firms to please the content owners they license from. As far as I'm concerned to lower quality database the better. EQ |
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 Noah VailOh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica |
to TwiztedZero
quote:
Rights holders have to enforce their rights. No such thing as a free lunch.
Time to break it down. Rights = Where the word Rights is traditionally associated the liberties ascribed to individual citizens that are to be protected from and by government, here it is used to describe a series of monopolistic non-constitutional rules, that have little to do with Sciences OR Useful Arts, purchased from corrupt lawmakers by the industries they are designed to benefit. Have to enforce = Have to? Of course not. It's a choice. More specifically, industries see it as a more profitable choice than creating content. Considering the billions of dollars industries pay to create and maintain the laws, their widely discredited thinking isn't surprising. No such thing as a free lunch = Of course not. It's paid for in sweat equity as those who do desire to build content on previous works (the same way 100% of content is generated) are forced to negotiate increasingly complex and expensive legal labyrinths. The IP industries' free lunch is also paid for by everyone who loses to access to works that were promised to be in the public domain (in trade for a privilege of limited copyright) only to have that promise broken over and over by the next set of purchased copyright law that keeps those works locks away from the public they were promised to. |
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maartenaElmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA |
to AsherN
said by AsherN:But are they using military supplied VPNs or commercial one? There is a big difference. Once traffic exits the tunnel, you can't tell it was in a VPN. What Netflix is banning is know public addresses of commercial VPN providers. I don't know. I do know there are about 40,000 troops in Germany, and that a really great portion of those are there semi-permanent, or long term deployments. (e.g there is a huge military hospital there where wounded men are flown from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other regional deployments) Those people generally live off-base in German housing, served by German internet providers. I don't believe the military supplies VPN's for them, it is just "recommended" if you live off-base. I do know of at least 1 soldier I know personally that has mentioned in the past using a VPN he purchased (I don't know which one) so he could watch US television from his house in Germany near Ramstein AFB. Most officers get to take their family with them, I believe he was there for over 7 years, he just came back last year and started working for the company I worked for. He may have had a VPN to dial in to "work" as well, but if he was allowed to take a military computer off of the base, it was probably secured to the point things like Netflix won't work. No this was for his private time and also for his family, as he had his wife and young son with him while deployed there for many years. If you search on military forums, you will also find that most people working for the US military but NOT living in quarters on a base, will have to fend for themselves. Many of them can't get the AFN channels because their local cable company doesn't supply them (in Germany there are contracts with local cable companies to supply a few AFN's to military customers, I do know that, but still.... AFN doesn't get you that much. Some sports, which is nice.) so they go elsewhere for American TV such as Hulu and Netflix. Bottom line is however: most people deployed are on-base, there are probably about 20,000 worldwide not on bases (around 150,000 are deployed worldwide) so the group affected that would use personal VPN's is rather small. They can however generate a LOT of bad press among patriot Americans who will spread the news with a vengeance: "Hulu/Netflix blocks our boys, they are UNAmerican, outrageous", etc, etc - And although only a SMALL percentage of people would be affected, the potential negative press will cost them more then losing the actual military customers. (Who, in large, will get a new solution in place within a week because they all talk to each other). It's a dance they will have to do between the media companies on one side, and bad press on the other. Quite frankly, it is almost impossible to ban all VPN providers. It's even harder to ban e.g. a UK VPN provider that has leased servers in a US datacenter, something they could probably change on a whim to another datacenter with complete new IP ranges if they get wind they are losing customers because of a block. Netflix has outsourced it to a company, they can't be bothered themselves to do it all, and that company probably only does the minimum, based on how much they are paid. In think in the end we are going towards a global solution for this. The media companies already started releasing movies on the same day (give or take 24 hours due to time differences) in North America and Europe, and are often releasing the DVD/Bluray worldwide within the same week because if they don't.... the American BluRay would get pirated millions of times before they release it in Europe. At some point they will just have to make content available to the world at the same time, and these geo blocks will just become a thing of the past. |
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| maartena |
to jmck
said by jmck:geolocation per country is probably at 99% accuracy. where it fails is when new IP space gets assigned to an ISP and it takes time for databases to update. One word. SmartDNS  |
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to DKS
said by DKS:Rights holders have to enforce their rights. No such thing as a free lunch. More like rights holders have to drive paying customers back to piracy. Calling someone a pirate because they are a paid subscriber located in a different geographic region is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. They're digging their own grave on this one. |
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El QuintronCancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna |
to maartena
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to TwiztedZero
I did not see this scenario, but if I am a paying netflix customer in Canada, I get Canadian content. If I travel to the USA, I no longer have that Canadian content unless I use a VPN with Canadian IP/DNS. If I'm American, and travel to Canada, or any other country, I need to use a VPN service to access my US programming. What I read here is that if I'm Canadian, it's Canadian content for me, if I'm American, it's American content for me, etc. etc. etc. Does this mean Netflix is censoring by Nationality?
Take it another step. I get CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC along with AMC on cable. I pay my cable company for this service. I miss a show. I cannot log into any of their sites to watch said show. Why? I pay for the service yet I am denied online access?
This would explain why I opted out of high rate cable and stream what I watch. If netflix pulls the plug on me, fuck'em. That's $7.99 back in my pocket and I'll go back to streaming European TV. |
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to TwiztedZero
The content providers should simply start licensing based on total subscriber base of the service, not based on geography of distribution. |
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AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON |
to Laidback
said by Laidback:I did not see this scenario, but if I am a paying netflix customer in Canada, I get Canadian content. If I travel to the USA, I no longer have that Canadian content unless I use a VPN with Canadian IP/DNS. If I'm American, and travel to Canada, or any other country, I need to use a VPN service to access my US programming. What I read here is that if I'm Canadian, it's Canadian content for me, if I'm American, it's American content for me, etc. etc. etc. Does this mean Netflix is censoring by Nationality? Not quite. The license rights are by country. Your residence does not matter. You are supposed to get the library from the country you are in. Solution to your scenario is to geolock the subscriber. Would likely piss off as many people as the VPN crackdown. |
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maartenaElmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA |
to Laidback
said by Laidback:I did not see this scenario, but if I am a paying netflix customer in Canada, I get Canadian content. If I travel to the USA, I no longer have that Canadian content unless I use a VPN with Canadian IP/DNS. If I'm American, and travel to Canada, or any other country, I need to use a VPN service to access my US programming. What I read here is that if I'm Canadian, it's Canadian content for me, if I'm American, it's American content for me, etc. etc. etc. Does this mean Netflix is censoring by Nationality?
Take it another step. I get CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC along with AMC on cable. I pay my cable company for this service. I miss a show. I cannot log into any of their sites to watch said show. Why? I pay for the service yet I am denied online access?
This would explain why I opted out of high rate cable and stream what I watch. If netflix pulls the plug on me, fuck'em. That's $7.99 back in my pocket and I'll go back to streaming European TV. The fault lies with the media companies, the ones that own the content. They want to be able to tightly control access to the content so they can sell it in other countries. First off, your question about Netflix. Although they are the same company, Netflix has to acquire the rights for shows per country, even if a movie is owned by the same entity in both countries. There are some interesting difference between the countries too, for instance, Netflix started as a DVD-by-mail service before they started streaming (at least in the USA). When Robin Williams died, I wanted to watch "Good Morning Vietnam", only to find out that this movie is NOT available for streaming in the United States, probably because the rights to this movie were bought a long time ago and only DVD-by-mail rights were purchased. I, however, have a SmartDNS service that allows me to change the Netflic Locale, so I changed it to Canada. Low and behold, "Good Morning Vietnam" is available for streaming, so I watched it without a hitch - thanks to SmartDNS technology. Another movie that has the same problem is "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", no streaming in the US, but if I fool Netflix to think that I am Canadian, it comes right up. Now to your network television question: The big networks all have online services to watch their shows, but they tie them to the contracts with cable providers to watch them, to prevent cable companies from losing customers. Again, it is about control. Similarly, there are Canadian networks with which you have to authenticate with Bell, Cogeco, or whatever Canadian cable company. The media companies want to tightly control access to their media. In the end, it is all about money. I will take an old example that I know of. Take the sitcom series "Friends" (which, by the way, just hit Netflix in January this year). This series was hugely popular in the USA in the 90s, and was sold to over a hundred countries for syndication. Think all of Europe, most of South America and Asia, Australia, etc, etc.... the company that owns the rights to Friends still makes money off of the series to this day, and not just from Netflix. The series has been re-sold for syndication within the United States 5 times (which means it changed channel owners, not just being re-broadcast by the same channel owner 10. 15 years later), and there are still channels that show it today. On top of that, the actors still receive money from that show, even if it is shown in Albania or Zimbabwe or Guatemala. Case and Point: There is MORE money to be made outside of the USA, if the show is a success, then inside the USA, and the way to do that is to tightly control access per country, and sell licenses per country to watch the content. My opinion: keeping this tight a leash on content per country, will just increase piracy, rather then to curb it. |
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 DavesnothereChange is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada |
In short, again, as with so many other insane situations, the underlying reason is Corporate Greed and Politics ! (aka Follow the Money)
Is it a wonder that so many folks take matters into their own hands, inventing, or finding and subscribing to workarounds ?! |
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 BigSensFan
Premium Member
join:2003-07-16
Belle River, ON
1 recommendation |
to maartena
said by maartena:but if I fool Netflix to think that I am Canadian, it comes right up. You may be able to fool Netflix.. but we know you are not Canadian.. You never say EH!, you dont say Chesterfield and you probably say Poutine wrong |
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 your moderator at work
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 DKSDamn Kidney Stones
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON |
to Laidback
Re: Netflix Cracks Down On VPN & Proxy Pirates.said by Laidback:Take it another step. I get CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC along with AMC on cable. I pay my cable company for this service. I miss a show. I cannot log into any of their sites to watch said show. Why? I pay for the service yet I am denied online access? You don't have that right because you have not paid for that right and that service. You have paid for the right to watch programs on cable or satellite. Additional fees are to be negotiated and paid to the copyright owners if on line download rights are included. Your provider did not negotiate those rights and you haven't paid for them so you don't get them. Simple, eh? |
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| DKS |
to HeadSpinning
said by HeadSpinning:The content providers should simply start licensing based on total subscriber base of the service, not based on geography of distribution. Nope. Because all rights for distribution globally are based on geographic markets. |
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| DKS |
to Davesnothere
said by Davesnothere:
In short, again, as with so many other insane situations, the underlying reason is Corporate Greed and Politics ! (aka Follow the Money)
Is it a wonder that so many folks take matters into their own hands, inventing, or finding and subscribing to workarounds ?! So it is wrong to request payment for something you have created and hold the intellectual property rights for. OK. |
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3 recommendations |
said by DKS:So it is wrong to request payment for something you have created Nothing wrong with requesting payment. The problem is the copyright holders have not figured out that the internet is global, and they must adjust their licensing practices as such. Country borders on the internet are no longer respected. For the first time, consumers have more power than ever. As a producer, you must adjust or you will lose. I'm not saying piracy is right, however the internet shifted because of pirating. If you offer access to decent content, at a decent price you remove the incentive to pirate. You won't stop it completely- but you can recoup some cost. The world has changed; so too must the movie studios. Don't kid yourself, DKS. They're in it for themselves- and no one else- including actors. |
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to HeadSpinning
said by HeadSpinning:said by JAMESMTL:Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if netflix gives in at some point provides content based on the registered account country rather than geo location. That would break things when someone was traveling. Lets say you're a Canadian subscriber, and you travel to the US - you might be able to access content that's only licensed for Canada while you're traveling (yes, there are some programs available in Canada but not the US). Same would hold true for a US subscriber traveling to Canada. iTunes works like this. I made a US iTunes account so I could buy content not available in Canada. Once I went through the headache of making a US iTunes account, I didn't need to use the VPN to access it. I can simply login with my US account and buy US only content. I suppose that backs up your point though. If they locked it to the account, then people would simply make US netflix accounts (which many do already). |
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 elwoodbluesElwood Blues
Premium Member
join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in |
to TwiztedZero
You want to talk about greedy?
I work for a Rent A car company, and now big music has decided that the cars they rent, and have radios (which car doesn't?) is considered public space and they want the Rental companies to buy a "pubic broadcast license".
It's the same BS when it comes to your Blu Ray or DVD viewing, more then a few people, it's considered a public viewing and not allowed (not that they can enforce it). |
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