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Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

Industry leaders like NordVPN and ExpressVPN may engage in P2P routing (to use residential IPs especially) to unblock services like Netflix and Disney+ [1].

HolaVPN unapologetically does this too [2].

All of this is discounting the new-age dVPNs like Orchid (not quite the Tor replacement that was promised? [3]) and Mysterium [4].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15576457

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14331049

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The Internet detects geoblocking as damage and routes around it?

It's always good for a VPN to deny any information about the customer to a server, I would imagine that's not what was referred to as sketchy. Making a user indistinguishable from a typical user from country X is just the VPN doing its job correctly.

It seems, however, that at least some VPN providers use their customers' bandwidth without their knowledge to route other customers through it. I'd say that qualifies as sketchy.

Although on an entirely personal level, I'm not a fan of stuff like going through VPN to use Disney+. I think people should ideally either not watch or pirate geoblocked content. Consuming geoblocked content through VPNs is basically letting such companies get away with discrimination and still get your money.

Isn't the vast majority of geoblocking due to regulations, legislation, or contract agreements? That hardly qualifies as "discrimination."

It's left over from a time before distribution over the internet was practical, when middle-men added value (local promotion, collection of royalties, etc) to video distrubution.

The internet made them largely redundant, but they still had their contracts and pushed to have things like geo-blocking to maintain their "local monopoly" arrangement.

When legal options are not readily available to me due to geo-blocking, I have no qualms about pirating instead.

I'm not arguing in favor of geographic blackouts, I'm arguing against them being "discrimination" by any sensible definition of the word. Nobody's sitting in an office somewhere trying to decide which sitcoms to block to most piss off the Armenians.

If they have to block you due to law, then sure since it's not their choice. Signing a contract however hardly makes it any less discriminatory. Signing a contract that means you now have to block Armenians is like signing a contract saying you won't allow Armenians into your store or will refuse to sell them stuff.

Just because this type of licensing contract is common in the media industry doesn't make it acceptable. People should just pirate whenever they hit a wall like that.

Its much more difficult to take this stance when you live in a part of the world where such services are not available to you, just because of your LAT/LNG. Several times already I found myself "wanting" to pay for content, but the only way to get it was by circumventing geoblocking.

Why not pirate it instead?

I agree in principle, but sometimes it’s hard.

I pay a significant amount of money for MLB streaming, only to have many games blacked out. Due to various factors, I cannot legally get access to those games.

It figuratively kills me that I live in an area where three of the five closest teams to me are blacked out on MLB.tv but they're all far enough that it would take several hours of driving to actually go to a game in-person and the local TV stations don't air those games. It's actually pretty much completely killed my interest in baseball since I can't watch any of the teams I actually care about.

what's wrong with pirating geoblocked content in this case? if the owner actually believes that piracy == lost sales, this would be a signal that the person might have paid for the content if it were available in their locale.

Maybe my sentence was confusing, I think pirating is fine. (not watch) || pirate

Back at home the company behind NordVPN is touted as a top company.Recenly was reading an article that they'll be moving to new premises, as they've already got 1500 working for them.

That’s the thing that is so bizarre about VPNs. That’s a big company — why do people trust them?

Most users probably don't trust them much at all, but trust them just enough for the very minimal uses they might need them for. I would not use a consumer vpn if my life or liberty depended on it.

How much trust do you really need to lend to them if you're just using it because you want to unblock Netflix or get around your school/work network barriers?

Many people think they are buying some sort of security.

I don't think that's unintentional either. All my targeted ads lately have been for VPNs, and anecdotally every single one has made a huge deal about the dangers of roaming the internet when not "protected" by a VPN. Every single one of my non-tech friends who has asked about security and privacy has had similar misconceptions too.

They have to. It’s pretty much a grey market business at best.

How does residential IPs actual work?

Maybe ISPs have a list of IPs to assign to residential customers?

TorGuard's "Streaming IP" certainly does. It allows me to use streaming services and sites that are normally blocked for me at my home in Mexico.

I just route my entire connection through it on one of my SSIDs/VLANs.

You filter by block's AS. It's not always 100% correct, but with enough people you can collect your own list of most common VPS / hosting companies.

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