If you’ve been using a proxy service or Chrome extension to gain access to worldwide Netflix servers, we’ve got some bad news. As Netflix creates more of its own content, the service can avoid the issue altogether since it owns the licensing.
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He wrote: (via VentureBeat): “Some members use proxies or “unblockers” to access titles available outside their territory”.
In a blog post, Netflix announced today that it would be taking measures to prevent users from using proxies to access content that is unavailable in their current region. He declined to offers specifics when asked by Varietywhat kind of technological magic they’d be using to make everybody play by the rules, but he did say that Netflix “uses a variety of technologies to properly geolocate members and to avoid attempts to circumvent proper geolocation”. “Enforcing those restrictions is a Netflix responsibility”, said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner.
The company now licenses content by geographic territories, meaning the TV shows and movies available on the service differ, to varying degrees, by region. Fullagar said in his post that Netflix will “employ the same or similar measures other firms do”.
Meanwhile, in the short term, blocking VPN proxies could very well elevate Netflix’s originals.
A Netflix spokesperson said, at that time, “We use industry standard methods to block VPNs”.
“We’re dealing with a system that’s very fragmented”, Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said in an interview last week.
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Netflix says it hopes to eventually be able to offer the same movies and TV shows in all markets. In certain parts of the world where Netflix is newly available, the company’s third-party content offerings may feel limited. The Netflix service suffered from a lot of capacity problems back when the company was haggling with ISPs such as Comcast and Verizon over interconnection fees, and VPNs and third-party DNS services could re-route traffic around congested points. (For context, the company has more than 70 million paying subscribers.) If that figure is right, that means there’s a very real demand for the service in China. Now with Netflix available on a global scale, we may begin to see rights holders release their content worldwide in one go if it seems more beneficial to do so.
