Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market.

The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them.

Also, you're paying a fixed monthly fee, and unless you're part of the small minority that travels a lot, you're not likely to drop Netflix over not being able to watch certain movies in foreign countries, hence they didn't lose anything.

While only a small minority might travel (across country borders) a lot in the US, I imagine in Europe it's a much higher proportion of the population that regularly travels to other countries.

There are regions where people commute daily over the border, and even more where people commute weekly.

e.g. I have a colleague who lives in Malmö (Sweden) and commutes daily to Copenhagen (Denmark). Lots of people travel into Luxembourg every day.

When I lived in the UK, the director's family lived on a pretty island in Spain, and he went every Friday for the weekend. Not exactly good for his CO₂ emissions, but people do this kind of thing.

Yay, cheap airlines. When I was interning at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in the UK, I met a cleaner who was flying back to Poland for the weekend every other week, to attend university ("extramural" is the proper term, I think?). I was pretty shocked that one can afford this on a salary of a cleaner in a government facility.

Europe is small in comparison to US and in EU borders virtually do not exists exactly like between states in US. You can go and work in any country in EU if you are EU citizen without any permissions or special paper. Plus there is a lot of countries like Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and couple more which are so small/have so good highway system that from any place in that country you can cross the border in under 2 hours which is basically like driving from SF to Sacramento or from NYC to Philadelphia. The point is that a lot of people travels cross country in Europe, very often it's they daily commute.

>The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them.

This is being actively addressed by the EU:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/copyright

Unlucky for this guy that wont help him after brexit.

Licensing a movie in such a way that it can be played in France but not Poland seems as ridiculous as licensing it such that it can be played in Pennsylvania but not Minnesota. When will this Stone Age practice go away?

Are you saying it shouldn’t be legal? Or that the business practice doesn’t make sense?

Let’s say you’re a French movie distributor. You know the French market, you know which movies will sell, you know how to market to French audiences. Because of this you can bid more on the rights to distribute movies in France than a global company that doesn’t have any specific knowledge about the French market (your return is likely to be higher and you’re liekely to have fewer failures). Same in the Czech, Romanian, etc markets.

But let’s say this movie conflicts with the release of some other movie you’re distributing so you want to hold it back for three weeks.

What’s your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?

> What’s your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?

Stop signing exclusive deals with regional distributors. If you're going to put something on Netflix, put it on Netflix world-wide. That doesn't mean you can't also put it on a streaming service based in France that concentrates on French language movies -- do both. Let them each pay you for non-exclusive global rights.

You get paid more per service for an exclusive deal, but you also get paid by fewer services. Which is increasingly looking like a bad deal as the many different services proliferate. Having a hundred buyers is more profitable than having only one buyer that pays ten times as much.

It's the same game they're playing with regional exclusivity to begin with -- get more buyers by dividing up the rights. Rights in one country aren't worth as much as rights world-wide but you can sell them to more people.

The difference is that regional exclusivity makes customers angry and non-exclusive licensing makes customers happy.

Distribution rights for huge back catalogs were sold to third party local to a given country/region distributors long ago. There's a lot of entropy there, and each has exclusivity to control distribution for the given region.

It's not that easy to work away from. Which is why Netflix has been paying more to create or co-create content (most Netflix content isn't world-wide exclusive it seems).

> Distribution rights for huge back catalogs were sold to third party local to a given country/region distributors long ago. There's a lot of entropy there, and each has exclusivity to control distribution for the given region.

Which is another reason not to use regional licensing going forward, and pass laws to disfavor it in general. It increases transaction costs -- then when Netflix or any of your hundred other buyers wants global rights to a particular film, they have to negotiate with a hundred regional distributors instead of just the original creator. The transaction costs go from "N" to "N times M" where N and M are both large. And transaction costs make otherwise profitable transactions either less profitable or not happen at all.

> Which is another reason not to use regional licensing going forward, and pass laws to disfavor it in general

I'm curious what your proposed legislation would be. Just outlaw exclusive licensing? Would you prohibit vertical integration between content producers and distributors or just force vertically integrated companies to license content to competing distributors?

How about a distributor that has an inherent market advantage and so can bid higher on the rights than other distributors? Would that be allowed? Or would you require producers to charge some lowest common denominator fee so that you can't create releases that are effectively exclusive?

I just can't imagine how you would ever effectively police this without taking away a lot of free market rights from participants.

BTW, just so it's clear, I fully support the current EU Digital Single Market rules that try to enforce the fact that you should be allowed to watch your content while you are traveling. I think that's much easier on all sides of the equation because you're not forcing anyone to make additional deals that they don't want to make (i.e. distributing content to other companies when they want it to be exclusive). I just think it's a big step from that to actually legislating away exclusive distribution deals.

> I'm curious what your proposed legislation would be.

A big thing would be to just discontinue legislative support for it. Get rid of any law preventing third parties from circumventing region locks, so that major companies can overtly thwart them.

Then you can get a "tell Netflix I'm in..." selector from your ISP or bank and the problem gets solved by the market itself.

Correct. I've used Netflix accounts in Canada, the US, Taiwan/HK, Japan, and the UK. They all have different content. But access the content is tied to the account's home region rather than your location (at least for the short term on trips).

yes, it shouldn't be legal. EU single market and all that.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-4781_en.htm

The single market helps with physical media (e.g. DVDs) and the digital single market helps with electronic sell through (e.g. the Apple model where you buy a movie digitally and download it).

But there are still two big gaps

1. Even for physical or download to own media, you can still strike distribution exclusives and you can make them based on language. I can make a deal with a German distributor that they're the only ones that gets to distribute the German version of my movie. They can choose to delay the release of the German version for as long as they want. If you only speak German then you can't watch the movie even if the French, Italian, Spanish and Polish versions were released 6 months ago.

2. This really doesn't help with SVOD (e.g. Netflix-style) services. I can make exclusive deals with an SVOD provider in Germany and one in France. If the French provider decides they're going to hold back the release of the movie on their service then, sure, with the EU single digital market the German provider has to let you sign up, but now you're signing up for SVOD services all over the place.

Telling people who have already licensed the movie in any territory that they must stop because $newlocale could resolve beautifully at $7 a showing for 5 in 4K VR, or that they need to go fund the footwork of censoring it for DPRK in 2018Q3 is evil. It's fine to let people seek a fine new venue available in locales they mean to not be seeing hurricanes in (but might.) New Search should get you. But not like 'Dear Farenheit 451' tyvm.

When people in Poland earn as much as people in France, hence the local distributors can charge the same amount for a movie regardless of the country in which they are operating.

In my case, my life is spent between France and China where Netflix is inexistant. I won't cancel the subscription since my family in France is using it, but it would be almost pointless to keep paying only for myself.

I don't understand this practice as well, when you are paying for a DVD or a VOD service which allow you to download the file, you can still watch it anywhere. Is it illegal to bring a DVD abroad? Why don't they give you the catalog you paid for in first place, everywhere, depending on your country's bank card? Then, no more need to setup a VPN blockade.

I feel these copyright companies often pick the most inconvenient option, even if it's costing them more in the end.

Well.. region codes (do those still exist?) certainly make (made?) it difficult to watch DVD's from abroad on many players.

Unless for some odd reason your going to buy a Sony or Panasonic DVD player then most DVD players work for all regions, infact if I went to the local supermarket in Thailand I think I would struggle to find a DVD player that still embraced region restrictions. Don't forget the gold plated HDMI cables

The Digital Single Market should improve the situation in the European Union.

Start from https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/digital_en – I've read something about them solving (or aiming to solve) exactly the situation you describe.

Netflix isn't locking it down, the company they are buying the media from is locking it down.

Netflix is enforcing it. They do the actual technical action of blocking access.

They are required to per the licensing deal they made with the content owner.

This always reads like an excuse. They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details Netflix has to deploy. If the deal says "no access for users outside country x", Netflix could just ask the user from which country they are from. Then, depending on the answer either show it or not.

On another note, some companies like this. Take Valve with Steam. They are definitly in a position to dictate "no region lock bullshit", yet they still make them available. Because it means more money.

> They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details

The deal can include whatever the content owners want it to include. And the content owners want it to include strict enforcement.

They can specify the specific technical details of enforcement, if they want. That's a legal contract, and one that they have a financial incentive to offer. Or they can specify an acceptable level of enforcement failures, or they can specify financial penalties for insufficient enforcement, or they can specify Netflix carries liability for infringement that it allows.

Or they could leave Netflix to do as they will, but threaten to pull their content or to sue Netflix for contributory negligence or whatever if Netflix doesn't comply. The fact of the matter is, the content owners have leverage and Netflix is not (yet?) in a position where they can blow off such concerns. Netflix is trying to get into that position, by creating its own content, but right now the majority of their content is dependent on other parties finding Netflix an acceptable content partner.

You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it.

However, in reality, the content owners really aren't that dumb and incompetent. There are very punishing legal implications to breaking the contracts, especially your relationship with others. And the content owners don't just do nothing; there's quite detailed questions and requirements they give when you renew their content, and they very often discover things they want to change after.

It's obviously a problematic enough relationship that netflix doesn't want to be a part of it anymore. More power to them; I wish this could be done for all industries as easily/well.

>You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it.

In the EU most people have identity documents... and enough services that provide identity verification. The said verification is mandatory in some industries like online gambling.

There is no intrinsic hurdle to remove the retarded IP block. Using VPN to bypass it is just yet another step away but again, why bother with VPN when I can get it via torrent?

That doesn't matter. The studio doesn't care that you live in country X. They just care that it's being viewed in country Y. I disagree with this practice as well, but I doubt even a company like Netflix has the clout to negotiate better terms.

> but I doubt even a company like Netflix has the clout to negotiate better terms.

I think they might be getting there - they've shown they can generate their own content that people want to watch and that they're a "destination" site - both pretty big sticks to wield at the next relicensing discussion.

(Imagine trying to explain to your investors that your next 10 years of films won't be on Netflix...)

I don't really think they're getting there. Stuff like Disney planning to pull most of their content off Netflix in favor of their own streaming service they're going to release makes me wonder how strong Netflix really is. I feel like studios could all develop their own walled gardens, avoid giving Netflix a cut, and do quite well.

That’s just the EU though, no such service exists on the US side. Also again these restrictions are put in place by the content owners, not netflix. It is very feasible to remove said checks but the content owners want them in place for their reasons. One can argue all day about how inconvenient this is but until they make more money without the geographic restrictions they will remain in place.

The OP complains about not being able to see movies within the EU (Poland/UK), hence my reply.

As a side effect, btw, you can't watch Netflix if you habitually use a VPN (as they block proxies).

> if you habitually use a VPN

depends on the VPN...

if you mean 'commercial vpn service', then probably yes.

if you mean 'routing it through some other machine you own', 'your access to <xyzpq network>' then probably no..

vpn != commercial vpn service

I was running my own Netflix VPN service (admittedly on a low cost VPS), and was blocked within a day when Netflix introduced their new policy.

Try from a residential IP block; off a simple raspberry at home for example.

Yeah, they are blocking most VPS providers. You'll need an obscure VPS host or a residential IP

Surely because they have to if they want to continue to have access to content.

Yeah but what would you expect Netflix to do? Just illegally stream it anyway? They'd get in trouble...

You can use playon cloud [0] which is an online dvr service for sites like Netflix, Hulu, etc. They appear to be legal which is good.

  [0] https://www.playon.tv/cloud

PlayOn desktop works pretty well too. That plus Plex is way more convenient when travelling internationally and in places with poor network access.

Do you really watch the same movie every month?

That doesn't have anything to do with it. Many folks don't - but their children are likely to do so. People watch the same shows every month, depending on their viewing habits. People research movies and shows at different times than they watch them, only to find out they can't actually watch it when they get to the other country. And it sucks.

Movies no but I often watch comedy series like a "re run". Just turn it on when I am doing stuff in the kitchen to have Friends running in the background so I don't have to pay full attention to it.

This is also not the full story. Recently I was watching one TV series on Netflix and when I was in the middle of the season Netlfilx informed me that by the end of January they will remove it because of copyright deal (they could stream it only for certain period of time in Poland). Of course that series is still available in UK.