Attn: everybody using a VPN or similar to access US Netflix‘s far superior library.
You / we are about to get fucked.
Netflix’s Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture David Fullagar announced in a blog post this morning that they’ll be cracking down on geo-blockers by employing technologies unknown, in an attempt to ensure each of their 190 countries only consumer content specifically licensed for them.
He writes:
“If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn’t be a reason for members to use proxies or “unblockers” to fool our systems into thinking they’re in a different country than they’re actually in. We are making progress in licensing content across the world and, as of last week, now offer the Netflix service in 190 countries, but we have a ways to go before we can offer people the same films and TV series everywhere.
“Over time, we anticipate being able to do so. For now, given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories, the TV shows and movies we offer differ, to varying degrees, by territory. In the meantime, we will continue to respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location.
“Some members use proxies or “unblockers” to access titles available outside their territory. To address this, we employ the same or similar measures other firms do. This technology continues to evolve and we are evolving with it. That means in coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are. We are confident this change won’t impact members not using proxies.
“We look forward to offering all of our content everywhere and to consumers being able to enjoy all of Netflix without using a proxy. That’s the goal we will keep pushing towards.”
Look, in fairness – this has been a long time coming. Before they even launched into the Australian marketplace (January 2015) they announced they’d be weeding out the geo-blockers, an amusing sentiment considering a widely estimated 200,000 Aussies were already subscribers to US Netflix.
This whole thing is fraught with unknowns, mates. We’ve got no idea what technologies they’ll be employing, when they’ll be employing them, if they’ll even work, and if so, how long they’ll work before someone finds a new fix. We don’t even know if this will ultimately benefit or hurt the type of content we (legally) get access to.
Photo: AFP / Getty.
