Netflix's Assault On VPNs Is Stupid, Annoying And Erodes User Security
from the international-charade dept
Earlier this year Netflix surprised everybody by announcing it was expanding into 130 additional countries, bringing its total footprint to 190 markets. But alongside the announcement came the less-welcome news that Netflix was also planning to crack down more on "content tourism," or the act of using a VPN to trick Netflix into letting you watch content specifically licensed for other countries. If you take a look at what's available per country, the motivation to use a VPN to watch content not available in your market becomes abundantly obvious.And while the press and public engaged in a lot of hand-wringing about Netflix's decision to crack down on VPN use, it really wasn't much of a problem for most VPN providers to bypass Netflix's restrictions. And indeed, if you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed Netflix basically admitting that this "crack down" wouldn't be much of one, since even the company realized it was largely futile:
"We do apply industry standard technologies to limit the use of proxies,” (Netflix chief product officer Neil) 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."So why is Netflix engaging in a practice it realizes is largely pointless? To try and calm global broadcasting partners terrified by the fact that Netflix is re-writing the rules of global television and eroding the power of global media empires unchallenged for the better part of a generation. Netflix still needs to strike licensing deals with many of these companies, and to do so these broadcasters need to see Netflix as a partner, not a threat. So to keep these companies' executives calm, Netflix is basically giving a used-car-salesman-esque wink and saying "sure, we'll make sure your outdated regional restrictions still hold," even though Netflix's publicly-stated goal is demolishing region restrictions completely.
All of that said, Netflix's "crack down" on VPNs still has a notably negative impact on global user privacy and security. And as Dan Gillmor at Slate noted this week it's just downright annoying for the millions of paying customers that use a VPN everyday as a part of their routine security and privacy arsenal:
"No doubt this pleases the Hollywood studios, the control freaks of copyright. From this video watcher’s perspective, it’s beyond annoying. I don’t download Hollywood movies or TV shows from torrent sites. I pay, willingly, for streaming and DVD rentals and, for some special films, an outright DVD purchase. Yet I’m being punished when I stream video because I also want security. So are countless others who want to do the right thing. Tens of thousands have signed an online petition asking Netflix to reconsider."It's unlikely that Netflix plans to do much about this in the short term. It knows most VPN providers will continue to provide workarounds for customers who know better, and is apparently willing to alienate and annoy customers unwilling or unable to switch VPN providers for the temporary, artificial benefit of its broadcaster relationships. If Netflix continues to be successful the good news will be that regional restrictions will die; the bad news is it's relatively clear the company doesn't give a damn about the repercussions as we wait the decade or longer it's going to take Netflix to actually accomplish this.
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Filed Under: copyright, geoblocking, security, streaming, vpn
Companies: netflix
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'Yet'
Treat your customers like criminals for long enough and it's pretty much a given that at least some of them will start to wonder just why they're paying in the first place if the treatment is no different from the 'free' option. Get a reputation for treating your customers like that and a notable amount of would-be-customers won't even try the pay option, given they're essentially paying to be treated as though they hadn't.
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However even that doesn't cover the instance where regional restrictions mean that something flat out isn't available in a given area, and as a result there isn't any chance for profits because it's not available to be purchased.
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If you're talking about physical goods that's true, but there's a transportation element that comes into play. A record label, for example, might license several companies on various continents to manufacture their product rather than pay shipping costs from one country to the rest of the world. Alternatively the company may decide their record will be sold only in the country of manufacture and any neighboring countries and not worry about licensing or shipping to other parts of the world; if the record becomes a best seller then they'll look to further manufacturing and distribution.
Digital goods, on the other hand, once 'in the can' have very little distribution costs. If anything the company has to get the word out their product exists so people can buy & download; sticking it on a shelf in a retail store doesn't work too well with digital goods (not that it always worked with physical goods but that's another story). Thus the company might need publicity offices or contract with various advertising agencies around the world. So if a digital product is not available in one country or continent it's because of selfishness, spite, or whatever reason; it's not due to distribution/shipping costs.
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Creative Artists sell their souls to the devil.
Consumers pay the devil to devour the souls of the artists.
This is the Devil's Deal!
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Then why the regional restrictions on Netflix between the US, Canada, Australia and Europe? Why does DVD region coding have North America, Europe and Japan in different regions?
Why are regional restrictions enforced against consumers but not corporations? The answer:
You've heard of High Court / Low Court, where the wealthy and powerful get off scot free for crimes that would put us little people in jail for a long time. Investment fraud, lying to Congress, offshore tax havens etc.
There's also High Market / Low Market. Corporations can move jobs overseas at will. They can buy goods and materials overseas. They bribe/lobby to have trade in services and investor protection included in all the hot new international trade agreements.
Consumers get the Low Market. Those who buy goods from second world countries and sell them in North America at second world prices, tend to get bankrupted in court. DVDs come region-coded to keep the markets separate. Canadians are blocked from watching Daily Show clips linked to on many web sites. Canadians who pay for the American Netflix selection get declared thieves. And their consumer, environmental and job safety rights are overridden by the ISDS rules in the new treaties.
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It's about money, that's for sure, but the reason is a little more complex.
Publishers want to strike deals with local distributors. Some distributors want exclusivity in their respective countries, and most wouldn't want to pay a worldwide license anyway. (Remember that the legacy industries mostly consider TV broadcasters as distributors.)
It was a system that - more or less - worked in the TV era. Internet changes the rules, being a worldwide network, so rights owners and local distributors alike try to resist the change.
For local broadcasters, internet makes them irrelevant.
For rights owners, striking multiple local deals is way more profitable than a single global license anyway.
So neither is happy if regional licenses are not enforced.
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Annnnnd this is why I'm not a Netflix customer
So exactly why should I bother trying to pay them for a service that they've explicitly said they won't deliver?
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Just wait until this year when the situation is suddenly reversed. Netflix will be showing Star Wars: The Force Awakens only in Canada.
In the US, Disney has a deal in place with premium channel Starz for movies released through the end of 2015. Disney has a new with Netflix for movies released after January 1, 2016, but The Force Awakens was released earlier.
That streaming probably won't happen until late summer or early fall, after another six months of Trump coverage and shortly before his election. It's like a perfect storm for Canadian immigration.
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You're paying money for something you're not going to physically possess...
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Where it gets dishonest and sleazy is where the streaming service has an "Own it now!" button or claim. The same goes with most anything else with DRM, since they tend to be orphaned and the ability to play the media lost.
This gets to the heart of the problem with shrink-wrap software agreements, media DRM, required online activation and the DMCA: You can truly own an object, but never a service. And yet here they are, selling services, treating them legally as services, and yet treating them as objects in the sales pitch.
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Like people used to do with VHS.
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Ownership only makes sense if like music, the value comes from repeated listening.
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Maybe Netflix should. ..
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The first problem I see with your suggestion is physical internet connections around the world... an example is China - if you stay in a major brand hotel in some locations they have agreements with the Chinese government to bypass parts of the Great Firewall (TM) and allow VPN usage so you can actually watch Netflix over there (its complicated politics and business). However, the major pipe back to North America goes to the LA area so that is the best location for VPN connectivity if you want to stream stuff. I've tried connecting to my Toronto VPN location from Taicang and the Netflix experience is almost unusable, whereas connecting to LA is tolerable.
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Same as the old boss
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... or to stream from (illegal but free) sites that haven't paid for any licenses and leave my VPN on...
and as a bonus, option two neatly circumvents most of the perceived risks of streaming from an illegal site?
This'll crack down on piracy all right.
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I was using a U.S. IP address while in the U.S., so I'm not sure how I was actually violating any regional restrictions. But now? Fuck 'em. They asked for this.
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I do wonder how long it will be before Netflix starts paying out millions in fees to lawyers to battle the inevitable lawsuits by American users who cannot access content they paid for, in their own country, unless they lower their personal security settings.
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A VPN for accessing Netflix is stupid anyway, a waste of network resources and just there to slow you down.
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Connecting to the internet via an unsecured AP at a hotel (which I do frequently) is nothing short of irresponsible and every time I've done a speed test using my VPN while at home, my 60Mb connection has been no slower than 55Mb so I can't complain about a slowdown there, since I don't need more than about 3Mb for SD and 5Mb for HD.
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petition
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