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Comment by socialist_coder | Hacker News Reader

Super lame. In the US, we use a German VPN so that we can get access to more German language content on both Amazon Prime and Netflix. It's the only way my half-German kids can stay fluent with their native tongue.

If there were a legal option to do so, I would do it. Why doesn't Netflix allow this? Come on!

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This likely has more to do with contracts with the content owners rather than Netflix directly. Distribution deals as they are effectively resell the same product by carving up the world into markets.

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.

Media companies got used to maximizing profits by region locking.

Media company lawyers got used to writing those contracts.

They are entrenched until people start successfully negotiating global licenses.

What also puzzles me is that the content is generally exclusive to Germany and watching it in the US wouldn't interfere with the American owner of the distribution rights since... there's none!

Why still block in country X when nobody owns the distribution rights in country X?

Because the people who own the rights to that think "I might be able to sell the USA rights".

Same problem. It's undermining dual language speaking kids

It’s not Netflix, but content rights I suspect.

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