Netflix to crack down on unblockers

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#1473746 18-Jan-2016 13:14

tdgeek:
NonprayingMantis:
Rikkitic:
NonprayingMantis: Nothing the unblockers could do to fix that and it would stop the vast majority of non-USA users from having a USA based account)
Address services already exist. This would just be an incentive for more. Measures like this will only stimulate counter-measures.
but the crucial point you are missing is how much hassle people are willing to go through to get Netflix. the reason people use the likes of unblock-us is that it is very very simple. If you had to use another service to verify your address in the USA, and maybe use a US-based credit card, etc etc those are all things that make it 'too hard' for most people. I've lost count of the number of people I've shown unblock-us and they just can't be bothered to even do that. Adding in an extra hurdle is going to cut down the number of people immensely. Yes, there will always be workarounds for those of us in the know or who are willing to jump through hoops - but Netflix don't need to stop everyone. They just need to stop most people. Address verification or CC location would do exactly that.
They have said that they only want people to use Netflix in the country that they are in, so that seems to remove CC location as a means to block. They support me using US Netflix when I am in the US. They should support me using Kiwi Netflix from anywhere, thats normal, expected, and a whole lot easier, and avoids any issue of content I am used to that a foreign Netflix doesn't have.

I pay for NF via Paypal. Are they going to block that??

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NonprayingMantis

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#1473748 18-Jan-2016 13:17

SaltyNZ:
NonprayingMantis: 1) Oh whoops, you accidentally forgot to update your region to USA when you switched on your TV and now you logged into NZ netflix and have to wait 8 hours before you can access USA again. (switching regions faster than you can fly between countries triggers the rule)
Good point; I'll have to write a shell script to switch to NZ Netflix at night when I'm asleep, "stream" some TV during the day when I'm not at home (thanks, unlimited broadband) and then back again around 4pm-ish.
2) And really, Netflix NZ is complete dross. If I had to watch 15 hours of Netflix NZ for every 15 hours of USA netflix, I think NZ Netflix would get very old, very fast. Yeah, I don't think very many people would be keen on that.
Yes, which is why they'll be walking a very fine line. Adhering to their contracts is one thing. It's quite another when doing so costs them customers.

congrats. you will be the 1% who finds a work around.

I guess I'll just repeat the thing I've said about 4 times in this thread already:

"Netflix do not want or need to stop everyone from accessing in the wrong region. they just need to stop most people by making it not worth the effort"

If you solution involves writing a shell script to switch regions and stream Netflix whilst you are sleeping, you are definitely not 'most people'

SaltyNZ

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#1473752 18-Jan-2016 13:20

NonprayingMantis: If you solution involves writing a shell script to switch regions and stream Netflix whilst you are sleeping, you are definitely not 'most people'

True. I'm enjoying the hypothetical cat and mouse more, though. Actually having to do that would be annoying. :-D

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NonprayingMantis

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#1473753 18-Jan-2016 13:20

old3eyes:
tdgeek:
NonprayingMantis:
Rikkitic:
NonprayingMantis: Nothing the unblockers could do to fix that and it would stop the vast majority of non-USA users from having a USA based account)
Address services already exist. This would just be an incentive for more. Measures like this will only stimulate counter-measures.
but the crucial point you are missing is how much hassle people are willing to go through to get Netflix. the reason people use the likes of unblock-us is that it is very very simple. If you had to use another service to verify your address in the USA, and maybe use a US-based credit card, etc etc those are all things that make it 'too hard' for most people. I've lost count of the number of people I've shown unblock-us and they just can't be bothered to even do that. Adding in an extra hurdle is going to cut down the number of people immensely. Yes, there will always be workarounds for those of us in the know or who are willing to jump through hoops - but Netflix don't need to stop everyone. They just need to stop most people. Address verification or CC location would do exactly that.
They have said that they only want people to use Netflix in the country that they are in, so that seems to remove CC location as a means to block. They support me using US Netflix when I am in the US. They should support me using Kiwi Netflix from anywhere, thats normal, expected, and a whole lot easier, and avoids any issue of content I am used to that a foreign Netflix doesn't have.
I pay for NF via Paypal. Are they going to block that??

Hunch would be that they wouldn't need to bother (remember this is all speculation here)

Most people pay for Netflix with a CC. Most people (especially average joes who just want their TV to 'work') probably don't even have a paypal account and don't want the hassle of putting recurring payments on there to be constantly topped up.

(In my sample of family members, for example, decidedly non-techy but still netflix users, I am the only one with a paypal account)

tdgeek

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#1473818 18-Jan-2016 14:06

SaltyNZ:
NonprayingMantis: 1) Oh whoops, you accidentally forgot to update your region to USA when you switched on your TV and now you logged into NZ netflix and have to wait 8 hours before you can access USA again. (switching regions faster than you can fly between countries triggers the rule)
Good point; I'll have to write a shell script to switch to NZ Netflix at night when I'm asleep, "stream" some TV during the day when I'm not at home (thanks, unlimited broadband) and then back again around 4pm-ish.
2) And really, Netflix NZ is complete dross. If I had to watch 15 hours of Netflix NZ for every 15 hours of USA netflix, I think NZ Netflix would get very old, very fast. Yeah, I don't think very many people would be keen on that.
Yes, which is why they'll be walking a very fine line. Adhering to their contracts is one thing. It's quite another when doing so costs them customers.

Losing a few foreign customers from the US bucket wont be noticed or material I imagine. And those customers are invalid customers, breaking the T+C's, so you could argue that they should not have been there anyway. What would help this is the same situation piracy was in. If and when content agreements expire and are renegotiated, the imbalances will start to self correct as more content moves to non US Netflix services. Over time the desire to use geoblockers will subside. Maybe the costs to NZ increase. Maybe NF brings in a rights surcharge to offset the rights the content owners didnt recieve when selling to others. User pays if you like. All speculation of course. Bottom line is the content owners probably don't care, as long as they get the revenue they can get and have been getting.

Krishant007

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#1473829 18-Jan-2016 14:16

I almost signed up for Netflix last week, but in light of this, i have reconsidered it. Perhaps going Amazon Prime is a better deal with access to all that amazon content.

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#1473892 18-Jan-2016 15:29

DeepBlueSky: This is not Netflix fault rather content providers trying to continue to impose their 1990's regional model to the current Global market.

Its totally counter productive to getting rid of pirating; once music was pirated on a wholesale basis but with the introduction of streaming services the likes of Spotify its on its last knees I would suggest.

As I see it one of two things will happen, either this Netflix statement is what it is a statement that will placate the content providers and show Netflix is doing something without actually doing something if you know what I mean. Or scenario two they go in boots and all to block geo DNS services and possibly succeed; this will one hit them in the bottom line as people unsubscribe and there be a few I'm sure, and two start up a new round of pirate sites sending everyone back a few years.

Only time will tell but it will be interesting.

Except that this is an inferior way to listen to music, from a sonic POV. Mp3 under 320 kbps is bad enough - and still around, sadly. If I had a choice I'd have everything in flac, and about 10% on LP for special occasions. Fortunately a small number of artists are offer flac and LP + merc bundles. Streaming to me, is like the modern version of the radio - its shuffle system is both sonically inferior and favours less familiarity with the artists themselves - you can ask someone who uses an audio streaming service what they like, and like old radio listeners they sometimes have no idea what they have been listening to.

The same is ultimately going to be true of video - you can't currently get any lossless video formats they'd be too big, but you can get ones with lower compression, and lossless audio, and although for some reason people still favour mainly invisible 4k over high quality video, there is still a distinct difference between that and streaming.

Much like that between radio and CD as above - streaming suits the casual watcher - but a film buff, or tv show addict may prefer everything in a higher grade. Actually I think there is a market for something above blu-ray. A completely lossless video/audio disk in 4k and 5.1. It would be far to big to casually torrent, and completely unstreamable. Like maybe along the lines of 1-2 TBs.

And I wonder to myself why they can't get anything with the bass reproduction of vinyl in audio yet. Maybe it just needs a much higher number of bits and Khz like studio recordings (makes sense, they press vinyl from here). But that could possibly make each song file about 100-200 mbs (Not that I'd have complaints, if I could have vinyl quality in my whole collection even if the storage cost extra bucks, that'd be mad!).

Maybe I am a freak for thinking this way. I mean I don't mind streaming. But I'd rarely ever watch some awesome new movie, or favourite TV show, or listen to a special occasion of listening to music with company with streaming. The difference with some music and flac is very stark versus 320 even, for me (say acoustic, piano, classical, ambient, some gentle rock, stuff with deep nuance). That difference is where all the magic and sparkle is. Streaming seems lifeless to me.

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pbgben

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#1473899 18-Jan-2016 15:40

Well then, back to Sonarr it is.

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Damager

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#1474226 18-Jan-2016 22:12

Does it make a difference if you registered on the USA site? I've been on Netflix for about 4 odd years.

I apologize if this has been answered, just seen this thread.

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#1474305 19-Jan-2016 07:40

What is interesting is that this whole thing came a couple of days after THIS PIECE where Netflix boss said they couldn't do much:

In the meantime, Canadian media executives, particularly from Bell, have in the past called consumer use of VPNs “stealing,” and allege that Netflix isn’t doing enough to stop it. Briefing books released by the new federal Liberal government show the issue of copyright and VPNs has been put on the radar of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly.

“We do apply industry standard technologies to limit the use of proxies,” Mr. Hunt says. “Since the goal of the proxy guys is to hide the source it’s not obvious how to make that work well. It’s likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game. [We] continue to rely on blacklists of VPN exit points maintained by companies that make it their job. Once [VPN providers] are on the blacklist, it’s trivial for them to move to a new IP address and evade.”

The company does claim to have a salutary effect on more overt forms of piracy. At the Netflix keynote last week, Mr. Sarandos said that the use of BitTorrent – a popular source of copyright-evading movie and television downloads – went down 14 per cent in Australia after Netflix officially launched in the spring of 2015. Unofficially, reports suggest as many as 200,000 Australians had already been accessing Netflix via VPN; there are more than a million subscribers now. Canada is estimated to have about four million subscribers.

“When we have global rights, there’s a significant reduction in piracy pressure on that content. If a major title goes out in the U.S. but not in Europe, it’s definitely pirated in Europe, much more than it is if it’s released simultaneously,” Mr. Hunt says.

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#1474332 19-Jan-2016 09:00

And last night i noticed a new Netflix zone has popped up on Unotelly app called "US Test 1", I'd say the mouse is limber and ready

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#1474372 19-Jan-2016 10:15

Dns4me now has a usa test as well

surfisup1000

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#1474398 19-Jan-2016 10:50

Meh! If it is no longer possible for me to watch US netflix i'll just cancel unotelly and netflix and find alternative sources.

I dislike NZ's fragmented and substandard online offerings. I don't like sky with their strategy of creating a new pay channel each time they want more revenue (see soho).

I'm envisaging a distant future where you just pay for what you watch, whenever, wherever, via a single interface and a library consisting of just about every show/movie ever made. Can it ever happen? It is getting closer in the music industry.

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#1474433 19-Jan-2016 11:23

surfisup1000: Meh! If it is no longer possible for me to watch US netflix i'll just cancel unotelly and netflix and find alternative sources. I dislike NZ's fragmented and substandard online offerings. I don't like sky with their strategy of creating a new pay channel each time they want more revenue (see soho). I'm envisaging a distant future where you just pay for what you watch, whenever, wherever, via a single interface and a library consisting of just about every show/movie ever made. Can it ever happen? It is getting closer in the music industry.

Yah like when Spotify was created and then artists got upset with the crappy pay they were getting so pulled their service and went to OTHER services, so then to listen to some artists you need a second just as expensive subscription. Wait till some content providers lose the plot with Netflix or a program you really like gets a better offer from HBO.

In theory you getting you content from ALTERNATIVE sources, assuming you mean what I think you mean, means you are stealing. See other thread for that discussion.

The valid choices are:

1) Pay providers for content, and voice your opinion to them on how things would be better, and hope they agree.

2) Choice to not use current provider and move to another provider offering equivalent content and let first provider know why you left (You should ALWAYS do this, and in a calm, respectful and assertive (Not aggressive) way).

3) Stop watching content and switch to other content or go do something else with your time and money, and in the end enough people doing that, will effect supply and demand, and providers will bow to providing the content you want the way you want, or cease to exist.

The best thing you can do to affect change is make your opinion heard in a reasonable way. Start a petition, and get as many people across it as you can, submit it to the CXO suite of said provider. This works more often than you might think. Often decision makers are far removed from the people who's

lives they affect with said decisions.

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#1475639 20-Jan-2016 19:06

NonprayingMantis: "Netflix do not want or need to stop everyone from accessing in the wrong region. they just need to stop most people by making it not worth the effort"

I'd say they need do nothing more than appear to make a token attempt so that they can go back to the content owners and say "well... we tried" whilst continuing to enjoy the obvious benefits of not actually succeeding to stop anybody at all.

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