Hacker News Reader

Comment by Coincoin | Hacker News Reader

Here in Canada almost all English language content is licensed to a single company, Bell. They systematically deny any access to Netflix and started their own service, Crave TV. They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.

They are taking advantage of a government granted monopoly they had in the 1900's and now control a disproportionate amount of the media in Canada.

View on HN

Off topic, but...

> They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.

At first, I thought this meant Netflix banning all use of VPN for streaming. Searching news articles shows in fact a Rogers VP rep had called on the government to outright ban VPN universally[1], but this was back in spring 2015. You are saying this has actually been made law and is enforced?

How did this pass when major corporations require VPNs, and I presume also government officials use it for sensitive communications?

[1] http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/rogers/rogers-governme...

It's not yet banned (Hospitals still use them, as do all major corps). I found the following post as late as Dec 2015 but nothing later than that.[1]

[1] http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/liberal-government-may-blo...

This is _insane_ if it actually happens .. a move I want to compare to China, except here it's the government bending to the will of a corporation, not the other way around!

Dumb stuff is proposed all the time in US proposals[1,2] but with great effort they get rejected (not all, sadly).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S...

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality

At some point one may wonder where the line goes between large corporations and governments.

It was enforced technically.

Netflix has upped the game to the point nobody is able to provide a service to watch non-canadian Netflix in Canada, which renders Netflix useless.

You may have to find a manual solution. Have you tried spawning a VPS in the US and connecting to it via Shadowsocks?[1] I apparently can sign up for an account when routed through such a setup and Netflix doesn't seem to think it's a VPN (this was a VPS hosted in Germany, however). I can give more details if interested.

[1] https://shadowsocks.org/

Do you then have to create a separate account "from the US"?

Netflix made sense when we could watch movies from any countries, not just the US. A lot of smaller countries would have movies not available in US/Canada but still in English.

Also: I'm happy to pay for content, but if I have to hack my way around to the point that it's harder than pirating...

> Do you then have to create a separate account "from the US"?

I have not tried, as I do not actually have an account with them. But I would be curious to know the outcomes.

> I'm happy to pay for content, but if I have to hack my way around to the point that it's harder than pirating...

Well, at least using an IP that doesn't represent your legal domain isn't [considered] illegal (yet?) [1]

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/what-is-a-vpn-are-...

So, I was in Toronto in August and used my Netflix account to view movies at the hotel. I think it may have given me the Netflix Canada catalog (since it was over the hotel WiFi). I found that Netflix Canada catalog to be way superior to the one I see in the US. E.g Star Wars TFA was on the catalog, but not there when I got back to the US. Same with Elysium, etc.

It's funny you say that because as a Canadian Netflix user, almost every single person I know prefers the American Netflix catalog. Star Wars TFA is pretty much a one-off, we rarely get new blockbuster movies added to the Canadian catalog this soon after release.

What about Rogers? SFAIK, they are a peer to Bell with differences in region.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com