Netflix VPN Crackdown – Aims for a united Global Service

Netflix VPN Crackdown – Aims for a united Global Service

 

Netflix has started to crackdown on the use of VPNs to access geo-restricted content, but the company aims to create a united Global Service which will make VPN piracy obsolete. 

To be able to create a global service Netflix will need to be able to get movie and TV studios to offer Global licencing agreements instead of traditional geographical agreements. 

 

We look forward to offering all of our content everywhere and to consumers being able to enjoy all of Netflix without using a proxy. That’s the goal we will keep pushing towards.

 

The EU has already announced their Digital Single Market Strategy, where the EU wishes to removing Geo-Blocking in Europe, taking down digital discrimination and updating copyright law to apply to the EU as a whole and individual member states.

 

 

Right now Netflix legally must crack down on VPN piracy in order to enforce their content licencing terms, but this will result in a VPN arms race where so called “VPN Pirates” will move to more advances and harder to track VPN methods.  

 

  For now, given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories, the TV shows and movies we offer differ, to varying degrees, by territory. In the meantime, we will continue to respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location.

 

 

Here is what Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, had to say on the issue of VPN piracy last year. 

 

“The VPN thing is a small little asterisk compared to piracy,”  “Piracy is really the problem around the world.”

“The basic solution is for Netflix to get global and have its content be the same all around the world so there’s no incentive to [use a VPN]. Then we can work on the more important part which is piracy,” 

“The key thing about piracy is that some fraction of it is because [users] couldn’t get the content. That part we can fix. Some part of piracy however is because they just don’t want to pay. That’s a harder part. As an industry, we need to fix global content,” 

 

VPN Piracy is a small problem compared to true piracy, as user of VPNs on services like Netflix have shown that they are willing to pay for their content, despite the fact that the content may not be available in their country. One big example here is Anime, where many people across the world have very few options when it comes to legitimately accessing the content.

The solution to VPN piracy is simple, for the rights-holders for movies and TV shows to sell Global agreements for the distribution of digital media. The question now is if the rights-holders are willing to make this change. 

 

You can join the discussion on Netflix wanting to make a United Global service on the OC3D forums.