Netflix intensifies VPN ban and targets residential IP addresses
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
I am a British born expat, living in Qatar, so of course I want to watch the UK orientated Netflix programming and not the Arabic or Hindi. I have a UK TV license but of course, I can't watch UK TV from Qatar. Trying to pay for things online is frequently a nightmare as many companies won't take payment from a UK card unless it's from a UK IP. Same trying to pay tax on my US houses, also some websites don't even let you connect to them unless you use a US IP address! Google rightly defaults to Arabic if you're not logged in, that's fine, but even they don't provide a simple way to change the language to English! Similar with Spotify, same with Apple music. Whatsapp voice calls are blocked in Qatar.
All of these problems and many more are bypassed with a good VPN. It amazes me how few services ever take into consideration that people don't always live and work in their country of origin. If VPN's are clamped down on it's going to make life difficult for tens of millions of people. VPN's are actually VITAL in many situations.
I cannot purchase Audible audiobooks without VPN'ing back in to the US, even with credits I've accrued.
That's awesome for tourists. Go for a few weeks and you can't access the local apps. Brilliant.
Luckily these were easily side-loadable on an Android phone.
I wonder if this includes COVID contact tracing apps? It could be a very juicy story if so.
I keep three accounts for the three regions, two dummy and one main. One inelegant solution I found is to sign out of the main account, sign in with a dummy account and install the apps I need from that region and signing back in with the main account.
The point was to connect computers together, and users, whatever their geographical location was. I'm still not certain why we allowed geographical restrictions to exist on these networks of tubes.
There was a business need so someone stepped up to fill the void by geomapping IPs. Given legal compliance concerns this was inevitable, even completely ignoring the profit potential from even very coarse-grained (ie. country-level) differential pricing.
Actively preventing this would have necessitated some pretty ugly tradeoffs which no one was incentivized to make.
So now we have laws and customs from the 1930s governing streaming tv on the Internet.
And honestly, I can't see Netflix caring enough to crack down on it. If anything, it mimics what N should do, which is offer people an account with a logical geography independent of physical geography.
Assuming that the current geo-located situation continues, and realistically who sees that changing?, what's needed is a legal framework that explicitly allows people from different countries to access citizen-appropriate content in other parts of the world. Why should I have to jump through hoops to access a paid service like Netflix just because I happen to be located abroad for a week?
VPNs were never more than a band-aid solution to relocation problems, and truly are a terrible solution. They don't actually offer anonymity, privacy, or convenience. Their original job - tying remote people into a private network - is the only thing they're truly good at.
If you took a vacation in France, you could only watch what was on French TV or in their Cinemas.
Times have changed, and we'll suffer while old industries catch up.
It's a niche requirement. Commercial services aren't built for niche requirements because it's not worth it. Shouldn't be amazing.
I'd call it pretty short-sighted to not see that as an ever increasing problem. I'd also posit that a solution wouldn't take a colossal amount of resources to solve in most cases.
Let's say Netflix has to chose between two problems to solve: secure distribution for desired content, and ensuring that you can view that content wherever you are.
They likely see the tension between these things - the people who sell them media rights likely insist on tight region controls (or, would charge NF a lot more for "global" rights vs "US" rights.)
If NF messes up securing quality content, they risk losing most of their 75 million users. On the other hand, they risk inconveniencing ... thousands? Tens of thousands? of users while they are traveling.
I get their logic here.
Following that, if you're using a local UK bank account, you should be able to access UK structured services. Yes, I'm sure it's not as simple as that, but I can't see such a system requiring a radical overhaul of how services are distributed. Of course dual passport holders will be net winners, but no system is perfect, and I can't imagine many people going to the trouble of getting a US passport just to watch reruns of The Sopranos.
Let's assume media rights are sold on exclusive regional basis. If I own the rights to distribute a show in Latvia, nobody else has that right. Meaning when Netflix buys the rights to stream that same show in the US, it is explicitly prohibited from streaming it to other countries because those rights belong to others (eg, if Netflix allows even a US citizen to stream that show in Latvia, that harms my right as the licensee there.)
I would be surprised if the contract language has provisions for "well, if a US person is in another country you can still stream it to them."
So to do what you're proposing, Netflix has to either put themselves in legal jeopardy by violating the contracts they signed limiting distribution to the US (I know you think it's fine but I bet their lawyers don't think it is) or they would have to pay much more for international distribution - meaning, if NF is allows to stream to everywhere, they have to pay the creators much more because the creators won't be able to sell to others (like my Latvian company.)
So you can see that Netflix's "cost" of making you happy is either being sued into oblivious or dramatically increasing their operating costs. Now, if there were so many people who'd sign up for NF if this was available, they'd certainly do it. But I am guessing this affects such a small minority of their users, and that an even smaller minority cancels subscriptions because of this, that it's just bad ROI and they don't do it.
But I see your point, it's a license issue. I guess Netflix's lawyers should sharpen their pencils, because what you described is already happening, because despite their best efforts, the VPN's have managed to remain ahead.
It is never about blocking 100% of things - if your wall is 99.99999% effective then you can claim to have done what you need to do to be compliant with your contract.
Nope.
There are also some territories where there are significant cross country pollination of bank accounts - Australia and New Zealand are good examples. The EU is attempting to force cross territory banking without any limitations. Virtually nobody in the Middle East has a bank account in their actual country of residence.
Netflix could tell them to pound sand. If those distributors want to sell their product, they’ll have to bend. What’s the alternative? Movie theaters? Netflix is such a market mover now, they can play a lot harder than in their early days.
They are no longer a market mover. Disney is.
Netflix should've "pounded everyone" five years ago when they were the only player in town. Now they don't even have content to show (my feed is 80% Netflix productions and 19% 10-20 year old movies).
Ever.
Security of distributing content has literally nothing to do with this. It has been shown times and again that Netflix reduced piracy in countries where it started operations.
Region blocking is the product of greed and shortsightedness by content owners.
It doesn't
> In many cases multiple companies may own the rights to the same show for different regions
Yes. And the only reason for many of those "different right in different regions" is greed and shortsightedness.
> Probably worth much more than the 1% of people who switch countries AND have picky preferences on languages/subscribing to multiple services.
You're completely ignoring all the other people who are willing to pay money and watch content that is region-locked for no reason. A German will happily watch original content from the states. Because it's not middle ages anymore, and people are quite happy watching content in multiple languages, because they know them.
The studios who license the content do so on a geographic basis to various streaming providers.
It’s all geographic because its easier, and makes for a more consistent policy that all involved (content owners and distribution partners) can agree to. It’s not that I don’t understand your frustration but the whole system is set up that you can watch the content you can stream from the providers who serve the region you’re in. If the content you want to view isn’t available from a regional provider that’s not Netflix’s fault.
It’s not at all “easy” to switch to using something like a billing address because of the entrenched nature of the licensing system and a lack of motivation on the parts of the studios who have a system that “works” and likely wouldn’t see the benefit of what you’re proposing.
If that's the case, expect a crackdown on it. As another poster pointed out, 'digital nomadism' is illegal in most countries.
Is there a similar trick that specifies I only want search results that contain the search terms I searched for ?
Probably too much to ask ...
You can put phrases in quotes and some of the initial results may rearrange themselves to reflect this intention that you've signaled but, overall, you'll still get many results that either contain different arrangements of those terms or don't contain them at all.
The minus sign has even hazier functionality and completely falls apart if you are searching --command-line options, etc.
It's not like this isn't a solved problem ... altavista had properly functioning (and complex) boolean operators that worked to give you very precise search results.
The reason you can't do that with google is that google doesn't want you to.
The word you should use is "accepts".
Not only did google have the largest index, it also had the best search engine -- there's a reason they won on search. These days, they still have the largest index and the best crawler, but I'd argue they don't have the best query handler. At least DuckDuckGo takes what I say literally.
That said, maybe my memory is fuzzy and there was a time where Google search allowed rich queries and also did a good job at guessing users intentions.
John Giannandrea brought about more AI heavy search and forced 'natural language' queries down the throat of everyone.
It obviously makes google money and is the right tool for popular queries. But for anyone doing more 'power user' searches it is just inept and I agree with GGP duckduckgo is now a better search engine for more complex queries.
They "new" syntax is to surround the desired term with double quotes. But of course quoting was already used for searching phrases, so autosuggestions stopped working for phrase searches. Progress!
- Netflix has a smaller/worse selection in the UK, than in the US, and
- Netflix charges more in the UK than in the US, and
- A UK person could easily get access to Netflix US by getting a friend in the US (or a US-based ebay seller) to set up their Netflix account
It would be nearly impossible for Netflix to comply with their agreements with content owners.
Limiting content based on billing address is easier to bypass than your post suggests.
This can't be any random stranger if the UK person will be using the US person's means of payments. Therefore, not 100% but it could work in most cases.
One thing which supports your view: Spotify uses card billing address, and has large international pricing differences, but I don't hear much about people bypassing it by getting someone in the Philippines to pay for their account.
They sell netflix cards at supermarkets, so they would need to cease that also.
Netflix could trivially buy the rights cheaply for a small country with a tiny economy and then use these cards to sell to the US or other major countries where the rights could cost a thousand percent more.
No competent distributor will let them do this.
If you don't believe me, ask a Chinese friend to show you how easy it is to buy a Netflix account on Taobao.
I think this is why they're doing it this way, at least they get paid. For Netflix it doesn't really matter which region a subscriber uses as long as they pay.
I think they just act against VPN use because the content owners force them to. They love trying to enforce their old borders in a digital world that has none. Personally I think they should be happy that users are going out of their way to pay for the content given how many alternatives are available. They even pay more for the VPN itself.
Really, how many users will go like "Oh blast, my favourite show is not available in my region, guess I better wait until someone inks a deal and allows me to watch it"?
Just refusing to take someone's money and expecting them to wait until you will is not realistic. Even people that have worries about torrents will have friends/colleagues/nephews that are happy to produce a USB stick upon request.
In theory a single someone can share with another single someone but multiple households would be hard pressed to do so as it would be easy to exceed the number of screens preventing others who pay for the service from watching.
If you aren't already paying the extra $5 for 4 screens and UHD you only get 2 HD screens which is even more unsuited for sharing.
Shows are worth disproportionately more in some territories, local broadcasters are also very good customers they want to keep happy and only license in areas covered by their transmission windows, basic things like the structure of the school holidays and weather make a tremendous difference when it's profitable to launch a show etc etc.
So perhaps Netflix should actually disrupt the industry by killing those stupid regional agreements that are a vestige from when film was distributed on reels.
Films are still sold that way, but if anyone could crack the country-specific market paradigm, surely Netflix could.
I stopped paying for Netflix for a lot of reasons, but the straw that broke the camels back for me was when I wanted to watch something with my Fiancé who lives in the UK and despite the series in question being branded a Netflix series, they didn’t have it on their service in the UK.
I don’t lay this all at Netflix’s feet. This stuff has always been fucked and Netflix has less leverage then ever since every other rights holders wants toss their hat into the ring and hope they reach at least a break even point while their competitors fail and then consolidation happens as the losers make deals with the winners.
I don’t mind paying for services but the incredible fragmentation of the market right now has pushed me back over the line where it is so much easier and more convenient with less bullshit (You still can’t get more than 720p unless you’re using Edge on PC) involved to torrent the limited selection of media I’m interested in again.
It could be that the decision about which service gets European access rights is made only after the decision about which content will even be allowed for broadcast in a region.
It could be that in these huge corporations, the business side of the company negotiates regional access rights. The totally separate legal department enforces the geofence, and they are driven more by their contact with content producers’ anti-piracy legal departments, squeaky wheel style.
Anyhow, like I said, just speculation.
But yes, location is the thing that matters in contracts, because that is actually much easier to demonstrate.
This allows me to use all UK services perfectly. Including iPlayer.
Good thing about wireguard is I can use it with my android TV also, making UK media consumption a breeze.
Go to accounts.google.com and there's an option for lagnauges and in there there's a setting called something like "automatically add languages", disable that one.
> The law says you need to be covered by a TV Licence to: watch or record programmes as they’re being shown on TV, on any channel watch or stream programmes live on an online TV service (such as ITV Hub, All 4, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV, Sky Go, etc.) download or watch any BBC programmes on BBC iPlayer.
This is not about those platforms in general; it is about the likes of BBC iPlayer app on those platforms. Only the latter require a TV licence.
It is my understanding that, for example, watching BBC programmes on BritBox (a subscription-based streaming service from BBC and ITV) does not require a TV licence. [1]
[1] https://www.cordbusters.co.uk/tv-licence-in-the-uk-do-i-need...
Watching regular YouTube videos or movies/shows on Prime does not require a TV license.
I don’t live in the UK, but she is my head of state, so I have found a use for my queen.
Not a huge NF fan, but TBF Netflix is built for such a customer base — see how they don’t block their own material (as described in the article).
It’s the legacy rentiers who have control over distribution of various titles in individual countries. Those assholes need to die off.
>Most U.S. citizens 18 years or older who reside outside the United States are eligible to vote absentee for federal office candidates in U.S. primary and general elections. In addition, some states allow overseas citizens to vote for state and local office candidates and referendums. For information about your state, see the Voting Assistance Guide.
>In some states, U.S. citizens who are 18 years or older and were born abroad but who have never resided in the United States are eligible to vote absentee. Direct your questions about eligibility to local election officials
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
I'm pretty sure they would take it into consideration, it's just that licensing of IP is a really tricky business. It's not a technical or business issue, it's a legal issue because bypassing geo-restrictions with a VPN is probably violating the terms of service of most content producers.
In the entire UAE IIRC only licensed telecommunications providers can produce telecom. services, and that's why Whatsapp can't offer call
The concept of "licensing territory" for IP is a 19th century relic. Licensing rights for streamed content could easily be made personal instead of national.
Given the amount of expense and effort required to police specific IPs, it would be likely cheaper to handle this with a fine-grained approach than to keep refining the current mess with ever-more-complex content limiting epicycles.
That describes all legal issues.
I agree with you that its a relic that we should get rid of.
But its not simple to get rid of. There are tons of existing contracts.
There are some companies that their whole business is being content "distributer" for countries/territories. They will do anything they can to make sure they stay in business. They might be equivalent of horse whip manufacturer, but that doesn't mean they will go down without a fight.
For giant content owners like Disney, its probably easier to "contract renegotiation". Netfilx even if they were prepared to pay for worldwide distribution deal, it doesn't mean that content owners are willing or able to sell (if they have other exclusive agreements).
This mess would take a while (and by that I mean years and possibly decades) even if there was somebody powerful pushing for it. And I am not sure if there is any such powerful entity pushing for it.
Another way would be to have some kind of international deal-agreement but that's even harder to get.
In short technical side is the easiest. And all IP/VPN blocking is peanuts compared to what it would cost(time and money) to renegotiate all the deals.
Maybe they thought US citizens would never travel there. Thankfully, it works through a VPN.
Requesting records for anything is really hard when you can't even get the phone numbers from the website.
It’s not “rightly.” If I go to google.com, I expect google.com not the country-specific version. If, for example, I wanted Mexican google, I’d explicitly type google.com.mx etc. It’s a royal pain that google doesn’t respect the user’s intent and instead infers a language based on geography.
It reminds me of a comment on an article about one of the giants (Google perhaps) who did not correctly handle capitalization rules for Dutch last names and capitalized "van", etc. Someone said something along the lines of "it's the height of corporate arrogance when a company treats your entire country and identity as an edge case." How useful or convenient tech services are tends to correlate strongly with how close to SF Bay area your life is. A UK person in Qatar is way too far. Even a Francophone in North America seems to be too far for most services.
But I've spent months of my life telling various US based employers all the ways their assumptions about languages were wrong, and it was often a weird level of blindness where they'd be aware of some exceptions but fail to realise the same pattern repeats lots of places.
You'd see companies with separate Spanish versions of their US services still struggle to deal with the existence of Switzerland, for example.
I've gotten emails from multiple bigtechs -- dropbox was one IIRC -- that were half in German, half in English. Or more relevant to Netflix -- your language setting for content has to be the same as your language setting for the UI. I'm sure to some people these things seem like nitpicks, but that's exactly the problem: treating language as an afterthought is such a profoundly middle class white American view. The vast majority of the world works differently, and most tech firms simply don't care. This isn't something trivial. It's a core part of how people interact with the world.
Yeah, it sucks! How hard is it to have a general UI language setting and per-profile content language preferences? I usually set everything to English but that means my family can't use my Netflix.
There is one website I use that sends emails when a staff member takes an action on your account (an extremely common and expected behaviour, something that can happen multiple times a day).
The only problem is that these emails are localised to the language setting of the staff member who performed the action, not the language setting of the person actually receiving the email!
Just give me a service where I can pay a €5 per video track, €1 per audio track and €0.50 for a subtitle track with a full catalog of movies and languages from the whole world. Then I can assemble my own Fight Club with English, German and Japanese dubs and Russian, Swedish and Swahili subs without having to resort to piracy.
[1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/332587500166?hash=item4d6fc28286:g:... [2]:https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-hp-290-p0043w-own... [3]:https://support.plex.tv/articles/200471133-adding-local-subt... [4]:https://github.com/dubhater/vapoursynth-nnedi3 [5]:https://github.com/frypatch/plex-media-optimizer
OpenSubtitles.org[1] claims that downloading amateur transcribed subs and translation-subs is fair use.
> so you might as well download the whole movie in better quality and with less hassle.
My experience is that most movies that are not extremely popular are either not available for torrent download or if they are the audio is not 5.1 surround sound (6 audio channels whose combined bitrate is 448kbps) and the video bitrate is restricted enough to be DVD quality anyways.
Specifically for the video, a 2GB 1080p h264 compressed video will have an average video bitrate less than 2mbps. Its widely acknowledged that h264 is not greater than twice as efficient as MPEG-2 so lets double that to say that a 2GB 1080p h264 compressed video's perceived bitrate quality is no more than 4mbps. Most commercial DVDs will be 480p MPEG-2 compressed video with a bitrate greater than 5mbps.
For perceived video quality (other than diagonal edges and text) bitrate, not resolution, is what matters. Using an neural network AI upscaler such as nnedi3 (or even something less intensive such as the spline algorithm) to pre-upscale 480p video to 720p video will greatly improve the diagonal edges.
Note: If you have 1080p sources that are larger than 2GB and have 5.1 surround sound then you are absolutely correct in saying that the movie will be better quality. I just have not seen those available for download anywhere for the vast majority of movies.
Sometimes when it is supported, they capitalize it. It's a mess.
In fact, now also I get some places trying to be too helpful to the point of being confusing. For example, a trainer store that auto-detects location and lists prices in GBP but sizes in US (without indication) and doesn't actually have an EU/UK distribution centre. So whoops it's going to take ages to arrive, it gets re-listed in USD at the final checkout, whoops again, 3% charge from my credit card, and then the wrong size arrives. But at least I knew the rough GBP amount!
Customer Service rep. was aware of the issue but could not do anything about it.
They are going to use AI in the game more for such moderation, so I hold my breath.
Also, not sure what Spanish implies but Portuguese usually means Brazilian Portuguese. Dutch usually means Dutch, not Flemish, unless its a Belgian production.
Isn't 'cunt' also used much more casually in the UK and Australia?
Cursewords and women's nipples... has their devilish impact on society ever been proven or rather is there even any evidence whatsoever? Why do we accept this idiotic censorship again?
Exactly rule we've deduced with my wife in our trips in South-East Asia and out living in Russia.
Fun story:
In the middle of nowhere in Myanmar we'd stopped to eat in roadside shack (we'd travelled by motorcycle). Food was delicious, and my wife looked up Google Maps while we waited for ordered second dish. To our surprise, this shack was listed on GMaps. We wrote good review, why not? Google Map asks several additional questions, like «Is this place popular among the college crowd» and «Is this place wheelchair-accessible». Nearest college is about 500km to this place, 0.01% of children go to college, and wheelchairs, of course, could be pushed to this shack, as it has ground floor. I mean, no floor at all. It was very funny indeed.
But most of the time same service behavior is not funny, but irritating.
Not from UK but isn't there any app from your Set-top box or DTH provider like Sky-TV app?
I recently found in India that the apps of our set-top box providers are completely functional to watch any TV channel you subscribe, I don't watch TV so I didn't know this earlier but the app was the only way I could watch olympics as events were telecasted across multiple channels often simultaneously and so I had the app in several devices at the same time streaming different events.
How about Google uses the user agent's language setting sent in the header? This frustrates me to no end living in Germany using an English language browser.
A VPS already bypasses known VPN provider ranges. A friend in the UK or US willing to put a box on their network and lose some bandwidth for a contribution towards a bigger connection would be even better (but of course requiring some trust)...
It’s very tempting to ask a friend to buy a nuc, and just post them a pre-configured .m2 drive. Likely overkill as a Pi or similar would probably suffice.
Fun/sad fact (or not really a fact, honestly I didn't ask a lawyer to check) many are unaware off: "digital nomadism" is largely illegal, although nobody is hunting such people actively so far. The laws usually require you to have a local work permit if you work (even remotely, for your usual employer overseas) while residing in a foreign country.
Needless to say getting such a permit usually is unnecessarily hard. I believe governments should fix this by making it easy for foreigners working remotely on "leisure trips" to legalize their status and pay a reasonable amount of local taxes (to support the local infrastructure they use) while legitimately bypassing the mechanisms set to handicap them in competition with the local workforce (because they don't really compete with them in this case). Perhaps they could just introduce remote worker visa type which would be as easy to get as simple leisure travel visas are.
Things are still largely locked down from the pandemic, and I don’t think international tourism will ever go back to being as easy as it was pre-pandemic. Many formerly bustling tourist sites have decided its really nice not to have tourists.
In this context, I think we can expect the Balkanization of the Internet to continue.
War is likely as well.
I doubt this can be forever because the effect is questionable (as long as countries don't put real lockdowns seriously quarantining every traveler with no exceptions and no chance to escape, and also eliminating illegal border crossing which is hardly possible) and the economic harm is enormous. I believe it's only a matter of time (and of financial resources running out perhaps) before every country will start treating COVID like ordinary influenza (which kills people too) and give up lockdowns.
> Many formerly bustling tourist sites have decided its really nice not to have tourists.
People who worked for tourist-dependent businesses will argue. Also note that for many countries tourism was the primary money source. In many such countries people don't care about COVID, don't wear masks (even though they are required to) and will probably resist governments which would block their income source for long.
>Whatsapp voice calls are blocked in Qatar.
that's probably a legal thing that you can't get around just because you happen to be visiting that country.
I dunno about rightly if they're using your IP to determine language instead of the language setting (Accept-Language header) from your browser
Will I still be alive, though? Because I've been waiting for some time now.
The browser sends your configured language with literally every http request. If I'm in China, Chinese characters are really not going to help me no matter if I'm logged in or out. That's why my browser transfers that preference. Looking at IP only is just annoying.
VPNs are essential for people who need to obscure their travel patterns from data brokers, for privacy or physical security reasons.
Blocking them is like making an app that doesn't work at all with location services disabled: it's a privacy-invasive dick move.
Overall, this general location-obsessed balkanization of online servicces, websites and pages has become ridiculous. A great number of tech companies and websites, in ther fixation of "giving users a more localized, personalized experience" (in part mostly just tracking the shit out of them obsessively) have actually done more to break the ease of using the internet as a traveler and in ways that are ironic as helll when one considers the supposed ideals of an internet that was supposed to help more people become MORE global in their access to media, content and services regardless of where they reside or travel to.
What we're seeing is an absurd, almost fuedalized regression of what should and easily could be fully delocalized platforms, which ruins them in the name of supposedly making them better. It's tedious, annoying and increasingly common.
This ISP was one that mostly absorbed smaller ISP's that weren't able to scale up enough to remain competitive.
One of the ISP's they absorbed was CondoInternet. A Seattle based firm that provided gigabit internet service across Seattle's affluent areas and expensive condos
As it turned out, a lot of the customers ordering the service hailed from a country with a very restrictive censorship regime. A "great firewall" if you will
They'd set up home-made VPN's using Raspberry Pi's etc for family to tunnel into and watch Netflix on typically
Netflix however even in 2017 was smart and their algorithm would see these thousands of people logging in while everyone else in Seattle was typically asleep and eventually ban the entire ISP's IP range. Logging in would give a "please turn off your proxy/VPN" error message
Every time this happened the ISP's phone tree would explode, going from mere seconds to literal 6-10 hour queue times. The NOC was entirely upskilled CS agents who had no idea how to contact Netflix's relevant teams to get the IP ban removed, instead they'd simply tell CS to have customers wait until the IP ban expired (usually a few days)
This would happen almost every other month
VPN's can be on any port
One of CondoInternet's advertised selling points before they sold to Wave Broadband is that you could buy the 1Gbps service and do whatever you wanted, including run your own servers.
So it wasn't an abuse of the service. Everyone I knew on CondoInternet would buy the highest speed package so they could run Minecraft and Plex and other servers for their friends. It was like having Speakeasy Internet Services SDSL back again but with 200 times the upload.
"'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' Jack Valenti said this in 1982 in testimony to the House of Representatives on why the VCR should be illegal. He also called the VCR an "avalanche" and a "tidal wave", and said it would make the film industry "bleed and bleed and hemorrhage"
As quoted on slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-bo...
My point is yes there are incredibly strict covenants in place and I'm sure they're probably preventing more revenue than they're allegedly protecting.
Netflix signs licensing deals that are per-country, and the licenses require that Netflix actively enforce that media is steamed only to the country in question.
You think Netflix is enforcing these restrictions because it wants to, or because it thinks it's fun to defeat VPN's?
Of course not. All of this effort costs money that obviously Netflix wouldn't be paying if it weren't required to. It's doing so because it's contractually obligated to.
So don't get mad at Netflix. They don't have a choice. They're just doing what their content providers require them to.
Would it be breach of contract if they were a bit lazy in how they checked what the user's country was (simple IP to country lookup, for instance)?
However it is a pretty good scapegoat convenience to point your fingers to copyright lawyers.
The thing is they probably realized that if they continued to do nothing, everyone and their dog would be connected through a Canadian ip which gives people the most content out of any country out there.
Honestly all I care about is the Columbian soap opera that only streams in Columbia and Argentina ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The have to do all sorts of Infrastructure tricks and optimizations to have the performance that they currently do.
They most likely realized they had a non-insignificant number of vpn connections (that can change country in short notice) and this probably introduced a massive spanner in the works on their Infrastructure/Optimizations.
I doubt the studios understand half of what Netflix has to do backend wise to appreciate any of it on a negotiation table.
And the studios are a lot smarter than you think, they've been doing regional licensing for a long time now. Everyone doing negotiations knows VPN's are the tool to get around region restrictions, and any exec can just ask their assistant or teenage kid to sign up for a handful of VPN services and see if they're able to watch Netflix through it. VPN's aren't some secret only hackers know about, they've had widespread consumer use for a long time.
The studios don't need to understand much of what Netflix is doing on the backend. They just put in the contract that Netflix must make all reasonable effort to ensure region restrictions can't be evaded via VPN, maintaining up-to-date lists of blocked IP ranges, which will be periodically verified via e.g. the current top 10 most popular VPN providers.
It's all quite simple and straightforward. No scapegoating.
Did they have to do damned ML to catch people?
I feel like this was probably true five years ago, but not today. The whole point of publishers slowly setting up their own streaming services (like Disney -> Disney+) and streaming services slowly vertically integrating with studios (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video + Amazon Studios) is to bypass this stupid shit.
If Netflix financed the show, and Netflix streams the show, and Netflix has global distribution, then why, pray tell, does Netflix give a shit any more about whether a user is using a VPN or not?
The number of shows where Netflix has genuinely global distribution can be counted on one hand, since they don't operate in China and tend to very deliberately not pay a bunch of money for rights they can't do anything with.
What do you think the future of Wave is since their leadership exited the firm and convinced an SPAC to put them in charge of a new regional competitor (Ziply Fiber)?
- Lower packet TTL than gateway
- Lower packet MTU than gateway
- Much higher latency than gateway
- WAN IP listening on well-known VPN ports for PPTP/IPsec/etc
- Ongoing sessions that suddenly teleported to a Chinese WAN IP when the VPN connection dropped
- Incorrect DNS configurations or stale caches that point toward inappropriate CDN edge nodes
- System time zone (via JavaScript or native app) not matching source region
- Unusual system language preferences for the region
- One of the hundreds of leaky data points revealed by Android devices and other native apps
I tried getting my parents internet funneled through UK so that they could watch some stuff...no good. Both netflix and amazon prime picked up that something was off-sides. I suspect it was latency cause other side of world
If the same thing happens with Netflix, it also won't keep me from watching Netflix content, I'll just stop paying for it. Other than the aforementioned Disney+ content, I rarely pirate anything these days and I'd rather not if I can help it.
The Disney+ one sounded like a (hilarious) bug in their logic. Not sure why that would translate to Netflix
Edit: I may have misunderstood. I thought Disney+ was blocking the user from paying for Disney+ but not from streaming Disney+. I missed the implication that they started pirating the content.
Perhaps the user had a dynamic IP address and kept getting one in the same range that was also used for VPNs. Perhaps he had a static one but Disney banned ranges by the /28 instead of individual addresses.
You're describing a botnet here. There are certainly organizations that will sell you access to their botnet, but I wouldn't describe them as uncontroversial, and I'd like to learn about ones that are structured as companies or that have as authoritative a reach as NordVPN.
I'm not saying this by itself is anything illegal - users generally unwittingly agree to it through wall-of-text ToS.
I agree--they're not denying me their content, they're denying my payment. If this is really where they want to go, they know how it ends (read: someone disrupts their model and they get left in the dust).
It's beyond me how Google doesn't scan for this and bring the hammer down. Too busy refining modal popups from iframes I guess.
It's not like Netflix enjoys making it a PITA to use their service, but the people who on the content care a great deal about it. They leverage these disparities to maximize their cash flow.
> Bright Data attains its peers (Residential and Mobile IPs) through the Bright SDK, which is integrated into applications as another form of app monetization.
> App users are presented with the option to opt-in to the Bright Data Network and become a peer (share their device idle resources) in exchange for an ad-free or free application. All peers sharing resources with the Bright Data residential network have personally opted-in and may opt-out at any time.
It would be nice to know which applications have their SDK integrated, so I could avoid them.
[1]: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hk-en/security/news/cybercr...
There are two different kinds of proxies (basically — there are more nuances I don’t want to get into): Datacenter (DC) and Residential (Resis). DC proxy servers are blazing fast but easy for a retailer to determine the traffic is coming from a datacenter like AWS so there is a high risk of getting the IP banned. Resis are slower but they are residential IPs so slower but less likely to get banned because they look like traffic from average consumers.
If the average buyer of proxies is buying 100+ IPs per month and IPs get banned constantly, proxy providers need a massive pool of millions of IPs running on residential addresses. That’s where these “free” VPN come into play. The consumer gets no-cost VPN, but their PC becomes an exit node for these residential IP proxy providers who charge people for the proxy access. There are tons of proxy providers but I think most are just reseller accounts of a few massive firms that run the show.
I am only speaking on the topic from a purely technical perspective. I do not want to discuss or spark debate around the ethics or people’s displeasure with the existence of botting and/or scalpers — you asked for a use case, and I’m only answering the question with a multi-billion dollar use case.
At the same time, one would think this would be an area where Netflix wouldn't care about a very small number of people bypassing restrictions. They need to be seen to be enforcing the restrictions and they need to actually enforce them to a large extent. I guess I'm puzzled as to why they are going above-and-beyond expectations. Are the expectations that high? Have more VPNs made it easy to get around geo-blocks by using residential IP addresses?
It seems like Netflix is potentially going to end up blocking IP addresses of customers while cutting down on a very small amount of people hopping their geo-fences. It also seems like their content providers would be placated by the pretty decent job they do of banning VPNs.
The studios probably have seen the VPN ads everywhere marketing how easy it is to circumvent Netflix’s (and other’s) regional blocks
In the same vein, it can be rational behavior for a market leader who deals in private information (most online advertising companies) to advocate for consumer privacy protections. It "hurts" them, but if the resulting regulations are so onerous that only incumbent(s) can comply, it can restrict the competitive landscape and paradoxically be advantageous to the existing leaders.
https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s...
There is a different incentive at play here. Netflix wants to track individuals. I wouldn't be surprised if some other agreement were behind this move, perhaps like other secret agreements:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
Maybe this is naive, but doesn't Netflix already have enough information from the account already? Credit card info, name, address… what does having an IP address get them in addition to all that?
Information is deceptive because it's exponential. Detectives often make or break cases on a single lucky clue. Data mining on the Internet is no different. Information goes massively further than most people realize.
No, the second idea is silly. They already have buckets of information. In fact, they have a whole team dedicated to making sure they don't hold onto certain types of PII (Personally identifiable Info)
They have their flaws, but they don't waste time doing useless shit (once they have figured that out).
I mean, obviously they notice which accounts are breaking whatever rules are currently in force.
Have you missed the events of the last few years? Netflix's future competition isn't going to be scrappy startups, it's going to be content providers with their own streaming service.
But the fact that it’s an entirely artificial inefficiency, means it’s possible to completely ignore it. If somebody’s geo-circumventions are thwarted, they’re just going to return to old fashion piracy most of the time.
It’s a system that turns some paying customers into slightly higher-paying customers via market segmentation, but it turns a lot of paying customers into entirely non-paying customers. Eventually the TV and Movie industry will get to the point where they no longer think it’s worth it, and go the way of the music industry which doesn’t have a geo-restriction problem, or a piracy one.
I understand that this is about your location while streaming not while signing the contract.
I pay for UK Netflix still because where I live the local Netflix only gives me subtitles in the local language. If they lock me out of my VPN then I’ll cancel and just pirate stuff instead. This “edge case” is going to lose them money and retain the viability of the pirate network.
At one point I understand a double digit percentage of Ebay's entire revenue was people selling US Hulu pre-paid cards to viewers outside the US.
Bypassing financial geofiltering is easier than bypassing IP based geofiltering generally. But, ultimately, generally speaking studios nowadays expect you to do both, not one or the other, so Netflix adopting models on payment territory would not mean they didn't have to block VPNs any more, it means they would have to do both like everyone else does.
Also, having spent some time trying to build this product myself and failed, you are vastly overestimating how reliable international payment identification is on country of origin. Like a lot.
VPNs are definitely making heavy use of residential IPs now, they often have routing rules in place that use non res IPs for most traffic, but traffic to Netflix, Prime, iPlayer etc. get routed via a res IP.
Also have no idea why they're cracking down on it so hard, thought it'd help them retain customers if anything.
Not that I want to give them any ideas, but surely the best solution would be to just lock the account down to the region the billing account is from? Although I think you can sometimes get a payment through with a fake address, it'd at lest mean people can't jump between countries at will.
I could easily see a gray market in, essentially, location-specific "rebilling" springing up the same day as this. Want to watch a show that's not available in your country? Sign up here for an account billed through an address that can watch that show, with a small convenience surcharge.
There are some BINs which you could associate with a territory, but don't provide this level of assurance about the card holder (those "burner" credit card providers for instance), but the list of exceptions is short enough to manage quite easily.
There are already service providers that implement this, f1.tv does for instance. Another peculiar example is India, where they just use phone numbers, because getting a phone number in India requires a KYC process, non-residents are only entitled to temporary services, and it's very hard to maintain your service if you leave the country.
I'm pretty sure (based on dealing with DRM/geoIP restriction requirements in other spheres) that it's because the media companies are incredibly anal about enforcement on strict geographic lines. They don't care if your account is linked to a US credit card at a US billing address, despite how effective that is at ensuring that you are a US user (and how difficult it is to spoof). They are hellbent on the idea that no US-only content should ever be streamed to an IP address terminating at a non-US location. For them it's absolutely not about people or accounts - it's entirely a matter of geography.
Netflix could easily apply a rule based on the region of the billing account, and I am sure it would be vastly more effective than playing whack-a-mole with individual IP addresses. However, the media companies would undoubtedly still insist that they do strict geoIP restriction as well. And if Netflix did both, anybody who is traveling outside of their home country would find Netflix to be bereft of content; anyone who travelled frequently would find Netflix to be perfectly useless. By going all-in on geoIP, Netflix keeps the geoIP-fixated media companies happy, while ensuring that users see plenty of content even as they move from country to country.
I'd guess that Netflix is only upping their game on residential IPs etc now because the media companies are no longer happy and are leaning on them - VPN services are simply becoming too brazen about advertising the ability to bypass Netflix geo restrictions by clicking flags. Whenever it becomes this obvious to the media guys that anyone with a pulse and a credit card can circumvent Netflix's controls, they'll be pressed to 'do better' or lose their rights to content. Netflix takes some steps, catches some backlash, and the media companies are placated for a while.
From Netflix's point of view, it's better if everything is available in every region, as it makes their service more valuable.
Like, it possibly made some sense back when the stuff was actually broadcast via terrestrial TV to the given area (and even then it was normal to watch TV across national borders, even over the Iron Curtain!) but it really does not seem to make any sense what so ever in modern global world.
It rather seems like yet another case of someone clinging to and enforcing by any means available an outdated concept because it just so happens to bring them more money if they keep it alive.
Basically, there should be a place where you click on a button, pay some money and play the thing anywhere in the world.
Like even some possibly inflated/default price. Like this way you would get something from each viewer in geos where you have not actually sold the rights & nothing really says you can't rise or lower the price if you see demand or lack there of.
Anything else frankly looks like excuses to a normal viewer/customer in the year or 2021.
No it wouldn't. The dollars don't lie. The viewers opinion is reflected in what they pay for, and that is reflected in what distributors are willing to pay. These things do change over time as the landscape shifts and new business model possibilities show up (eg. Disney+ day and date streaming releases), but it has absolutely nothing to do with your armchair notions of what makes sense to a "normal viewer". They pay or they don't, businesses are rewarded by figuring out the aggregate implications.
- increases revenue
- relies on being able to separate those markets effectively
It's not obsolete, because it still works.
And it's not a historical accident resulting from past business models.
Content providers with no 'analogue' history also have geographical pricing. Example: Wes Bos' excellent JavaScript courses are priced differently depending on your country.
The Netflix example is more complicated, as there are transactions happening at two levels:
* studios are selling content to distributors in different markets
* Netflix is selling subscriptions to consumers in different markets
Also, unlike the single-event case at the top of my post, the service being provided isn't identical for all buyers. Folks in the UK don't get the same bundle of shows as folks in the US.
Even if folks in the UK pay more, that doesn't mean Netflix is OK with them watching all the shows that are available to Netflix US subscribers. Because the creators of those shows sold the UK rights to a different company (e.g. Sky TV) that was willing to pay more than Netflix.
Netflix doesn't care about this directly but, if UK customers bypass the restrictions at too large a scale, the creators/studios won't be willing to sell rights to Netflix in future. Because, by selling rights to Netflix for the US, they reduce the value of the rights they sell to Sky in UK.
The majority of TV viewing is still via broadcast methods.
Then they (the content lawyers) come back to Netflix and say "hey, 10% of these attempts got through, you are breaking our deal.
Obviously, some of these of these service providers are not the brightest bulbs on the internet, but try telling that to the legal department of a media conglomerate.
So, the technical team that handles this at Netflix has to shoot for the worst case, instead of the average case, even if they are already being effective.
There were other cases like this where it was less about expending the effort to make some contract happy, and doing so to make it look like we were doing so for the sole purpose of making it appear that it was the case to specific executives. Not their team, but them, specifically.
At first we were progressing with online streaming but now movies are streaming across Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Binge, Stan.
I can’t be bothered to have that many services, VPNs are getting banned for paying customers due content rights, so I may as well just go back to Torrent/NZB, or don’t watch and read a book instead.
The amount of stuff I want to watch and isn't on Netflix is very large too, probably about half or more of what I watch is not available on Netflix here but is elsewhere in the world.
All that tells me is Netflix is part of the mafiaa.
It was a shame. I found that I enjoyed interesting combinations like "Campy Science Fiction with a rating between 2 and 4". Now Netflix seems transfixed on shoving shitty daytime dating shows down my throat.
The real game changer is getting a reliable sonarr&radarr set up going
There are various pre-designed docker-compose scripts available online [0] that basically allow you to create such a setup by simply entering your VPN username and password and specifying a storage path. If you have any experience with Docker, they're dead easy to set up and they work flawlessly.
In my experience, Netflix honestly works better and streams more reliably than Plex or any other self-hosted alternative. The Jellyfin project has been making progress, but your mileage may vary.
In respect to this my setup for this (on Docker) looks like: radarr, sonarr, nzbget and nzbhydra. I serve my media using Plex (there are a lot of great alternatives to Plex out there also but I'm still very happy with Plex even as a non-paid user).
Plex/Jellyfin for watching content.
Sonarr(TV)/Radarr(Movies)/Lidarr(Music)/Readarr(Audio/Books) - For searching/organizing/starting downloads, monitoring for new releases and so on
nzbget/qbittorrent - for doing the actual downloads
prowlarr - to handle various indexers/search providers between *arr apps and downloaders
overseerr - to make everything foolproof for people who are not tech savvy. They can see what's downloaded, and request new stuff and they get an email once its been downloaded.
On top of that I have watchtower which does automatic updates, as everything is running as docker containers.
Honestly it seems like complicated setup, but it's really not, and once set up it runs without any issues. I've had this for a few years now, and there's been maaaybe a handful of times where I needed to fix something.
I've messed around with Plex but honestly find using a computer easier. Watch a lot of YouTube too but almost prefer the tv app for that.
Gigabit internet helps, everything is watchable almost instantly.
We have a media cartel that are also our telecoms, and they collaborate on prices and lobby heavily for protectionist legislation.
On top of that, they hold digital distribution rights for numerous properties and, historically, have done absurd things like only offer them on a service that is _tied to paying for cable_.
It won't change. The head of the regulatory body that oversees them is an ex-lobbyist for one of the larger telecoms.
EDIT: Oops replied to wrong comment.
keep in mind, they won't be small.
There is no way to legally obtain all the content by paying.
and what deal netflix had with the various content providers that expires, see e.g.
- the BR-enabled player software ("Cyberlink something " Windows-only) is a POS[1],
- playing BR directly on Linux is not a fun experience to get working (fucking DRM)
- not having to search through a cupboard of boxes for the disk I want to watch (convenience)
- not being arbitrarily restricted to 720p or less on streaming platforms ( because I have the audacity run Linux ) even for movies/series I would "buy in HD"
- etc. pp.
[1] From what I remember from using that software years ago: extremely laggy interface, audio volume slider does basically nothing above the "2%" setting where the sound will just be so loud it nearly blows your eardrums (even with Windows audio setting for that program at ~10%), basically no useful keybindings apart from <SPACE>, putting the popout menu on the screen to get more controls almost always locked the program up for >20 seconds, the software had giant ad banners for the other garbage made by that company, etc. pp.
Plus it's all done over TLS and your ISP won't send you notices because you're not uploading/sharing anything.
I think there could be a genuine market opening for a streaming platform that exclusively has films made before 5-10 years ago. Somethjng curated, with less attempts at using AI to predict what you like. Something for movie enthusiasts (and perhaps TV) to enjoy good cinema, not watch the latest politically charged soap opera with poor dialogue, instagram filter cinematography, and overly safe humor.
Then I realized there do exist some good shows that only had very few seasons: pushing daisies, doll hiuse, sense 8. The problem is many Netflix shows are bad...
Most shows are bad; Netflix is neither more nor less consistent with Sturgeon’s Law than any other network. They probably have far more bad shows than any single broadcast or cable channel simply because they aren't limited by the economy of time slots in how many shots they can fire to see what sticks.
More isn't necessarily better?
Naked Gun series, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, Idiocracy, The Terminal, Major League, Top Secret!, Hot Shots!, Beavis and Butthead Do America, The Terminator, Delirious, Robin Hood Men in Tights, Captain Ron (crap, it's not free anymore), original Robocop, Secret of Nimh, Ghost, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Silence of the Lambs, Teen Wolf, to name a few.
It's a smaller selection and they don't seem to stay Free for more than a few months, so you have to keep checking it, but there's some good stuff on there.
Starlink customers definitely have a problem with Hulu already; their system does not work at all well with people whose IP addresses change frequently. I wonder if Netflix is about to start being a problem too.
More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/l5y9jl/hulu_live_...
I keep my "cable" subscription streaming service (when I even have one) separate from any other content I watch for that reason. Don't want it fucking up more than it has to.
The people piggybacking creds arent going to be buying their own account.
Take the MLB as an example.
1. They blackout your home team.
2. They also crack down hard on credential sharing
3. They also crack down hard on using a proxy/VPN to try and bypass blackouts.
The blackouts are outrageous in the own rights. The teams i want to follow are 4.5 and 11 hours away by car and are blacked out.....EVEN if i buy the team specific package for that team, games are blacked out....
So I just dont give them money anymore.
BUT, we launched with IPv6 support, which pretty much negates this whole issue for us when it comes to Netflix.
Also, this problem is probably ISP specific. If an ISP routes their global traffic over a globally shared pool of a couple public ipv4's via CGNAT for example, the ISP is virtually aiding the VPN providers which have obtained users from those ISPs. Netflix probably wants the ISP to stop doing that and instead chop up their public ipv4 pool into smaller pools so that they can ban individual sub-pools instead. The market position Netflix is in allows them to keep the users of small ISPs hostage in this situation. They only have to buckle in to large ISPs, if at all.
Anyways, this is a silly waste of time really. People paid for content. People should be allowed to watch it. If they want to watch american shows instead, why not let them.
I won't bother I'll just stream them for nothing if they foil my attempt to give them money for content and try them again in 2030 if they are still in business.
I advise them to prioritize customers. Imagine if you went to Walmart and they threw you out because you looked like a guy who shoplifted there last week. Would you shop there next week or even next year?
It feels a bit like when I quit social media. I freed a surprising amount of time, and liberated this just incredible reservoir of emotional energy that was previously allocated to the Void.
Thanks to that surplus, I learned how to dance. Seriously leveled up my cooking skills. Walking away from the prolefeed made my life better in a cornucopia of ways.
Ditching streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.) feels the same.
Companies like Bright Data (the leading residential proxy provider) sell access to what is essentially a legal botnet.
Their IPs are indeed VPN exit points, but they also belong to some innocent family that just accidentally installed a browser extension without reading the EULA. 99% of their residential IPs belong to ordinary people who have no idea they are part of the botnet.
When Netflix bans these IPs, they are also banning this family, who are probably very confused as to why they can no longer use their Netflix subscription.
My hope is Netflix is smart enough to only block users using these IPs when the browser and system timezone and other attributes don't align with the geolocation of the IP.
Also, Bright Data's IP pool is a secret but you can just sign up as a user and make tons of requests and log them for yourself. Not exactly rocket science.
And then people why piracy is becoming popular again.
Correct. Because the contracts they have to sign to get the shows you want to watch often come with crazy regional licensing.
If there were a legal option to do so, I would do it. Why doesn't Netflix allow this? Come on!
As for Netflix own productions, many I imagine are created in partnership with other production studios who don't generate subscriber revenue from a streaming service but from those same multi-country distribution deals.
Why still block in country X when nobody owns the distribution rights in country X?
Media company lawyers got used to writing those contracts.
They are entrenched until people start successfully negotiating global licenses.
Yes there's much more and in better quality today but you almost need a Personal Assistant now just to sub/unsub various services while the terms and catalog is constantly getting worse.
I had netflix and 10+ other subscriptions but recently just decided to close all of them and just torrent when i need to and drop the rest - no more having to use my already strained mental capacity to find stuff, switch services, unsub, sub, miss subtitles in local languages or in english etc. Way too much content was removed and seemingly disappeared sometimes mid season.
I'll still support indie projects, podcasts, smaller creators etc. but big business can get their shit together.
Imagine having 150 subscriptions as a family in the future "smart city" dystopia ranging from media to food to transport etc with a million pages of terms - i want less choices, less terms, better curation and don't want to use my life "handling" a personal technocracy.
I believe the billing methods should be changed to "if you don't use the service this month then you don't pay".
If I watch a single minute of Netflix this month then fine, bill me the normal monthly fee. If I don't watch anything then they shouldn't bill me. Same for all streaming services. This would solve that problem nicely for me.
This would also be good for game subscription services.
But this isn't even against pirates, this targets people who go through trouble not to pirate, and instead forces them to pirate to be able to watch certain things at all.
They are telling them to contact their ISP because either their ISP directly or the ISPs customers(or the person complaining) are using the ISPs IP addresses to circumvent geo restrictions.
So, I'd wager it's more likely the person/the persons household themselves have either wittingly or unwittingly been using something(e.g. Hola VPN) which enables others to proxy through their home IP (& vice versa)
I'm collateral damage of this change, and this definitely isn't the case for me.
Then imagine the car wash told me I should talk to Chevy because it's their problem.
What a bad analogy.
They must be buying a database of IP address locations and VPN addresses from somebody. I doubt they are putting that together themselves.
Couldn't they just buy a subscription to all the largest VPN providers and just run through the server list making a note of each server?
They can even let VPN users map the servers for them in the data collection phase. Look at the usage graph and you'll find a cluster of accounts that jump between the same cluster of IPs.
Or likely anyone on CGNAT for their home internet, I don't think this would be a reliable detection method.
For an Airbnb you’d have the accounts change frequently but seldom multiple account from the same IP. Whereas a BPN would see the same accounts frequently but with many overlapping accounts from the same IP.
Similarly with hotels you’d see the overlapping of accounts per IP but less regularity of the same accounts.
This feels like one of those problems machine learning could help solve. Though there is a lot you can deduce just from good old fashioned rules. Eg some IP subnets are going to have a higher probability of hosting a VPN (eg those bought for AWS EC2) vs legitimate traffic over other IP subnets.
I hope each person it happens to requires a charge back. It should cause netflix enough of an issue that they go back to focusing on the customer.
- being a tall bald dude (19yo at the time)
- wearing his Bundeswehr uniform (as a conscript on his way home for weekend leave)
Apparently that appearance wasn't enough to make it obvious he was a little older than 12.
Anyway, at least I didn't have to go through that conscription BS since I didn't reach 18 until after the "abeyance" in 2011. The equipment/supply problems and ever shortening training/service time for conscripts (last before the abeyance was 6 months total) make it no wonder that the Bundeswehr is sometimes mocked as "Deutschlands größter Trachtenverein" ("Germany's biggest costume club").
The AK my father and grandfather used in the NVA instead was a real wartime weapon, rugged, dependable and able to be produced in mass quantities relatively cheaply. The G36 instead is apparently expensive, fragile and not that accurate, ie. more of a showpiece.
It’s better to pissing a few people off but still have a license, than lose your license and thus have nothing to serve your customers. Which is just as true for pubs and bars as it is for video streaming services. And content owners know this too, which is why they can place such heavy demands on 3rd party platforms.
There are services that can detect most commercial VPN services, e.g. https://focsec.com
Bingo.
> They must be buying a database of IP address locations and VPN addresses from somebody. I doubt they are putting that together themselves.
Ehhh, I couldn't say. I mean, I could. But I won't.
The most ubiquitous and unblockable form of VPN is international cellular roaming. (While roaming, all traffic is tunneled back to the home carrier and blends in with their traffic.)
Of course, it's the most tedious VPN. It's also the most expensive. But what subset of traffic actually needs to go over the VPN? Like authentication and bot detection, these types of checks tend to be too expensive to perform on every request to every service endpoint.
Zoomers need to learn how to pirate content, they haven't yet as a cohort. All the rise in widescale piracy 10-20 years ago started because media distribution sucked ass. Once the streaming services started and were easy to use, everyone stopped pirating. Netflix didn't just kill Blockbuster, it stopped ThePirateBay from being a household name.
Since hell will freeze over before sensible copyright terms come about, piracy is our only hope to get rare/weird/controversial and out-of-print media. We need educated and more importantly, motivated, pirates to build up the communities again.
Interestingly, this is also changing - streaming services are offering plans at dirt cheap prices because they're essentially trying to compete with piracy. That's slowly caused a decrease in piracy, and prices have slowly started to go back up in India too.
So why not let me "lock" my account to UK? Then whatever IP i pop up on, just show me the UK licensed content ive paid for like normal.
Even better: give me 20 days a year of holiday use, exclude my vpn from that (just show uk content for any vpn connection i make) and ping me if i spend too long overseas.
Im not trying to cheat. I just want to not arse about with my privacy vs their copyright bs.
Drop the vacation clause if its easier. Im a british resident with a British account, show me what's British-licensed and forget IP Geo faff or vpn detection or whatever. Just ask for proof of residence once in a while.
Nevertheless, exiting my home traffic from the he.net core datacenter (in Fremont, CA, no less) gets the ban.
That is not my screwup. That is their screwup.
I want an app that lets me play whatever I want.
I have the money to pay for this but right now this app is called bittorrent.
Here's a simple challenge: find a legal online streaming service, any service which shows Mists Of Avalon from 2001. (Yes, yes, I know, I can find the Russian site which streams it for free, I strongly suspect it's pirating it.)
Besides, actors can be replaced, but you can't replace an author who's already written the book -- and the allegations against Bradley are much worse.
I have the money to pay for this but right now this app is called bittorrent.
The price, like any monopoly, is how effectively they can price discriminate combined with what they think they can ask. You ask "How much?", the answer is "What you got?".
These days I end up buying a fair amount of music and games with only a fraction acquired elsewhere. Both Bandcamp and GOG.com have been have sinks of money for me.
As for TV shows and movies, I only wish there was an equivalent which didn't sell an experience subpar to a DRM-free mkv.
[0] Never seen it for Netflix, but many here buy 3rd world country Spotify subscriptions for a fraction of what it costs in Germany. With Netflix I only hear about avoiding geoblocks.
I'm sure there are international travelers that would be inconvenienced but Netflix could create a separate plan for them.
I had Netflix for a few months, and there is a formula.
Throw a lot of money to writers, directors, and stars.
Writers use every trick in their box to put out a D+ movie.
Ditto for directors.
Actors just jawbone what's written.
Netflix should be glad anyone wants to watch their garbage.
Sounds harsh? I found most movies an insult. And try looking up Award Winning films--in emglish.
The pendulum is swinging back to the dark days before Netflix's distribution aggregation solution.
I pay for Netflix. If a media company doesn't want their IP on Netflix, then they don't get a share of my subscription. I don't have the time / desire to watch enough TV shows or movies to justify the cost of multiple subscriptions just in case there's one show I don't want to miss on one of those services. I do have Amazon Prime as well, but that's incidental - as soon as Prime TV is de-coupled from the delivery discount: gone from the monthly / annual subs list.
These kind of residential proxy servers are typically more expensive than a VPN however.
I'm not encouraging anyone to try Surge with Netflix, simply pointing out a rare service that's hard to find on the net, since the market is saturated with VPN companies with OpenVPN and Wireguard being the dominating protocols.
For a while my home network was running OpenMPTCProuter and I was testing bonding my 500mbps cable and 1000mbps fiber out to a linode VPS. So my home IP was a linode address.
I went to watch the newest season I Think You Should Leave (on an ATV) but only the first season showed up. As soon as I bypassed OpenMPTCProuter, the new season showed up. The same went for the app on my phone on the bonded wifi vs cellular.
The Linode IP worked for 99% of my home traffic, but I tended to get captchas occasionally and some sites didn’t work at all or said they didn’t work over VPN. It was just bad enough that I wasn’t willing to keep it set up that way.
To be clear I wish I lived in a world where I can legally watch everything without a hassle. But there's no such world like that regardless of how much we want to exist. The same way there's no such world where we get paid equally ( doing the same work obviously) because we're living in different locations/countries!
We are not talking about films which are specifically banned, or content which is generally illegal. We are talking about content that is 'normative' and generally legal around the world, but is artificially restricted based on geofencing.
For example, attempting to watch a film that is legal both in Country A and Country B, but not being able to because of the region you are logging into Netflix from.
Plenty of countries have freedom of speech rights in text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
So the stereotype is accurate?
By that same token, I wouldn't be surprised if lawyers have been breathing down their neck for years trying to pressure them to crack down on region lock-bypassing VPNs, and perhaps even threatening legal action against them.
(Of course, that's not justification for blocking residential IP addresses as VPNs when there are non-VPN users behind those IP addresses. Just wanted to point out that the blocking policy is probably something they have to do rather than something they want to do.)
Suppose you are Canadian. Netflix has permission to sell Americans "Media Package A" and Canadians "Media Package B". They don't have permission to sell Canadians "Media Package A". You are saying "just let me buy both" but Netflix does not have permission from media companies to sell you both.
If the VPN node's public IP matches the country in the subscriber's registration details, then it seems pretty unfair that they'd still restrict their account when accessed from that VPN IP. But I suppose from a technical standpoint it's probably far simpler for them to just find VPN IPs/subnets, add them to a database, and restrict content for any account accessed from any of those IPs, regardless of the account, IP, or content regions.
To add insult to injury, they don't even bother showing the movies and shows that they lock up this way. It's just about exercising monopoly power.
I'm guessing it's not a matter of nickel-and-diming, but it just really being very unwise or totally infeasible to get global rights for everything. Of course, I'm just blindly speculating and I have no clue and maybe they really are being cheap in some way.
And I think it's quite possible the VPN stuff really is out of their hands. (From a policy perspective, not an implementation perspective. Obviously the implementation is entirely on them, and the false positive bans are their fault.)
From a business perspective, I would think they'd be incentivized to allow them and not dedicate resources to trying to block them. But lots of podcasts I watch have a bunch of ad segments for different VPNs, where the main selling point is typically "watch stuff for other regions on Netflix", and I'm guessing the companies they're licensing from are increasingly seeing this loophole as basically a form of piracy.
For example, say they want to license a show, and they get it for one year for $50k, usa-only.
Okay, but we want it world-wide. Alright, that will be 3 million, world-wide, except Australia. Okay. wait, what?
We have a 7-year contract on Australia right now. We can't give you Australia.
Now netflix has to decide if it's worth it for the 350 people who want to watch this in Europe and Asia to take the second deal.
Sucks.
Re: Regional Pricing - Its no different than product prices changing depending on the country. Import/custom taxes/duties, trade treaties, etc, still are a thing in today's world. Again, not ridiculous, but changeable if people want to.
That is precisely what makes it ridiculous.
The assumption of the article seems to be that Netflix is performing some action on it's own to determine whether a residential user is on a VPN, and that this type of response is unhelpful buck-passing. But IIRC, for years now ISPs in the US have had the green light to monetize customer metadata. It seems possible that either Netflix or an industry-backed anti-piracy entity is buying lists with timestamped VPN usage per IP (based on packet traffic patterns?) for Netflix to compare to their usage time-stamps per IP and just assuming causation.
I don't know how far-fetched this is, but it fits with Netflix's response to these people's inquiries and it also removes the question of how Netflix might know if a user was streaming over a VPN through thier own residential ISP connection.
The most insidious part is that they don't tell you that you have reduced content, they just silently remove content if you use a VPN.
As an example: I can watch "The Game" (1997) from California, USA if I don't use a VPN. If I connect with Express VPN (through San Francisco) the title is not available. That is dumb.
Spotify only allows free accounts to be used in a different country for up to 14 days[0].
I am surprised Netflix hasn't implemented something similar - your account can only be used outside of the billing region for up to 30 days (perhaps in a 90 day period) or something like that.
That would make using a VPN with Netflix less appealing.
[0] - https://support.spotify.com/us/article/cant-log-in-abroad/
In lieu of that, does anyone know of a desktop/gui tcp proxy? I was thinking of making one and having it run on my Mom's computer, seeing as how she leaves it on 24/7 :)
Except that is not the alternative. There are many competing streaming services out there.
Next there'd be a Netflix Premium account that allows you to watch a worldwide collection of series and programs.
Many such cases! Sad!
Never will become a customer and honestly with their woke, there's nothing of value anyway!
Pls advise any working options.
2. This will only drive more people to piracy.