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Netflix to block proxy access to content not available locally

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Surely it would make sense to make the shows available everywhere first, and then stop people using proxies.

15 ( +14 / -0 )

Good luck with that, it is impossible to block all proxy's and VPN's.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Surely it would make sense to make the shows available everywhere first, and then stop people using proxies.

I think now that they have a service in most major countries, they are under more pressure by content creators to block VPN usage. Hopefully they make all of their content globally available in the near future, but I'm not crossing my fingers..

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Now, if only iTunes could get its act together and find a way to create a global iTunes Store. Just saying.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Netflix subscription can be blocked by country, How can you access other country netflix if they only allow certain area.

-4 ( +2 / -6 )

Hopefully they make all of their content globally available in the near future

It's not that Netflix doesn't want to provide their content globally, it's that the content providers don't give them permission to allow the content globally, due to agreements in other countries with other vendors for the supplying of that content.

6 ( +5 / -0 )

gogo: You are wrong. I use Private Internet Access as a VPN and I cannot view ABC.com in America. It is still able to see that I am coming out of Japan. This VPN provider is the best and they told me they cannot get past it right now. Some other sites do the same thing. It has to do with DNS. There is a way to possibly get around it with changing those settings but it is not for the average person.

Am glad I did not sign up for NetFlix. Torrents still work.

-3 ( +3 / -5 )

Netflix subscription can be blocked by country, How can you access other country netflix if they only allow certain area.

Through VPN and Proxy.

I use Private Internet Access as a VPN and I cannot view ABC.com in America. It is still able to see that I am coming out of Japan.

Actually, they cannot see that you are coming out of Japan. What they do is keep up on top of the IP addresses that the VPNs are using, and they block those IP addresses. If you were to connect to the VPN from within the US, you'd still find that you were blocked, even though you were in the US.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

“If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn’t be a reason for members to use proxies or unblockers,” Netflix >>vice president of content delivery architecture, David Fullagar, wrote in a blog. (http://nflx.it/1ORhbhz)

If "blue" was "green" there would not be any reason to call it "blue". Nice demonstration of saying anything

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Gogo is right. Proxies pop up all the time, and Netflix can only block a proxy after it becomes aware of it. That said, this will make it difficult. It's absurd in this day and age that record companies and film companies still block content by nation. It's time they join the 21st century.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Stranger: Thanks for that info. I will write to PIA and ask them if they constantly change the proxy addresses.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

They do. But all it takes is for one person to sign up, and constantly connect and re-connect, checking their IP addresses after connection, then block them from netflix. So you'll find that you may hit an IP address that works for a short period of time, but then it will be blocked.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

doesnt really matter if Netflix is able to block content, there are plenty of other free sites you can visit that has nearly all the latest TV shows that you can watch without fear of being blocked because of what country you reside in. In the end just like the music industry theyll fail, American companies cant regulate what sites can/cant be watched in say China Russia EU etc

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

@shonanbb: You must have something else set wrong on your computer. There is no way to identity IP traffic is coming through a VPN unless you know that IP is infact a VPN. More than likely they will try to detect known VPN services or investigate high levels of traffic.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I don't understand this "blocking by country" imposed by whoever installed it, at last... make it blocking by language if you really want to protect a local market.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

I guess China has been doing the same thing to people trying to VPN out to get to Gmail, Facebook, whatnot.

Netflix is in good company!

2 ( +3 / -1 )

I don't understand this "blocking by country" imposed by whoever installed it, at last... make it blocking by language if you really want to protect a local market.

That doesn't work though.

Let's say I create a tv series called 'Strange lands' in the USA in English. I then give exclusive license to Company A in the UK to distribute this series in the UK, in return for a portion of the sales. I then license Netflix to distribute this series, but due to my agreement with Company A in the UK, I cannot allow Netflix to show the series in the UK, because I have committed to exclusivity for Company A. Therefore I only license Netflix to show the series in the USA, and Netflix must respect this due to their own licensing agreements.

Both the the UK and the USA are English speaking countries, so blocking by language wouldn't work.

Now that all said, Netflix has grown to a point where they may be able to start to put pressure on the content producers, saying 'if you want us to show your product on Netflix, you need to grant us world-wide license', and due to their market dominance, content providers may be willing to capitulate to their demands. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it's probably what Netflix is aiming for.

6 ( +6 / -1 )

"Netflix said at the time that all of its shows would not be available immediately to subscribers in certain countries, but that it was working towards resolving that."

So, resolve it first, then block proxy servers. We all know who wants them blocked -- obsolete rental and cable companies.

0 ( +1 / -2 )

I guess China has been doing the same thing to people trying to VPN out to get to Gmail, Facebook, whatnot.

No, it's well known among the Chinese that using a VPN allows them to access Facebook. I have a number of Chinese friends on Facebook, all posting from the mainland (though their IP would show them posting from somewhere else).

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Strangerland: No, it's well known among the Chinese that using a VPN allows them to access Facebook ...

It is subject to interruption, though. My cousin couldn't make it through via VPN the last time he was over. You don't think the Chinese techies are sitting around growing moss while people tunnel through their national firewall, do you? Who would you bet on, the average home user of VPN or teams of professionals paid full-time to find ways to interdict it?

To the thread in general, more info re this topic at wikipedia. I guess the method most frequently used might be blacklisting of VPN ISPs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo-blocking

Geo-blocking or geoblocking is the practice of restricting access to internet content based upon the user's geographical location. In a geo-blocking scheme, the user's location is calculated using geolocation techniques, such as checking the user's IP address against a blacklist or whitelist; the result of this check is used to determine whether the system will approve or deny access to the content. ...

1 ( +1 / -0 )

“If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn’t be a reason for members to use proxies or unblockers,” Netflix vice president of content delivery architecture, David Fullagar, wrote in a blog.

WOW!!! A comment that means nothing since they just said...

Video-streaming service provider Netflix Inc said subscribers will, in a few weeks, no longer be able to use proxies to watch content not available in their home country.

So then you're screwed if your internet service access just happens to be behind a VPN firewall that is not in your GEO location. For security, work will NOT allow us to use an open internet connection so that would now mean I would need to have a Netflix account in a country that I don't even live in for this work or pay for a second internet service in the location I'm at each and every place I travel to or live at. That just became as complicated as regular TV service. WTF Netflix?!?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

It is subject to interruption, though. My cousin couldn't make it through via VPN the last time he was over.

Your cousin probably was using the same VPN he uses in the west. They circulate the VPNs that are the best to use among each other, and while you're correct, they do face interruption, it's fairly infrequent.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

He's Chinese, and went back home ... I think he might have gotten through briefly, once.

Here's an article from last Jan. about China blocking VPN:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/46ad9e26-a2b9-11e4-9630-00144feab7de.html

China intensifies VPN services crackdown - January 23, 2015

Internet users in mainland China are increasingly finding that the technology they use to circumvent the country’s “Great Firewall” has been blocked or is only intermittently available.

Virtual private networks, which encrypt and redirect web traffic to get around Beijing’s blocking technology, are either unavailable or appear to suffer more frequent terminations. ...

What exactly is happening is hard for experts to discern because no monitoring of VPN connections in China is done for public consumption, and the VPN services themselves generally do not provide detail on traffic interruptions. However, anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase in the instability of VPN connections since the end of last year.

“VPNs use a fundamentally fragile architecture that makes them easy for censors to block in a number of ways,” said Adam Fisk of Getlantern.org, a censorship circumvention tool. “VPNs use centralised servers with fixed IP addresses that can be blocked even if those IP addresses change quickly.”

He and other experts say they have detected greater sophistication in China’s blocking efforts recently. While previously China’s Great Firewall had to know the precise IP address of each VPN provider it is now able to identify VPN traffic during transit and shut it down. “VPNs frequently use unique protocols that can be blocked with little to no collateral damage to other services,” said Mr Fisk. ...

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I've been in China three times since September, and not had a problem with VPNs. My Chinese friends are posting on Facebook every day. I assure you, it's quite easy to use a VPN to get through the Firewall.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Both the the UK and the USA are English speaking countries, so blocking by language wouldn't work.

I meant license per language instead of licencing per territory. If you have the license of the English version then you can release it worldwide in English.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

I meant license per language instead of licencing per territory. If you have the license of the English version then you can release it worldwide in English.

That's definitely better for the consumer, but due to the consumerist tendencies of the content providers, they will likely to the path that leads to more money - which is license by region rather than language.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Strangerland: I've been in China three times since September, and not had a problem with VPNs. My Chinese friends are posting on Facebook every day. I assure you, it's quite easy to use a VPN to get through the Firewall.

Experiences differ. I just scrolled through his wall through and found a few places where he said his proxy was blocked, including one post from Oct. where he mentioned a longish time having trouble getting through. It's not like he'd need to get through constantly, though, he's moved back permanently and has a job, just posts back once in a while to keep up with his friends from college. I don't know if he switches proxies when one is down.

To me Chinese inability to block VPNs as much as they would like indicates resource allocation problem (a lot more persons trying to get through than persons trying to block, contrary to what I wrote earlier), or the reason mentioned in the FT article, that they're not keen on blocking VPN used for business purposes rather than for viewing censored content.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

And as I said, it's likely that he was using the same VPN he uses outside of China - and the authorities had blocked it. It's well known among the Chinese that VPNs can be used quite easily to get through the firewall - and as I say my Chinese friends are posting on Facebook every day. I also have used a VPN from China without problem for a cumulative 3 weeks in the past few months alone, and that's apart from other trips I have made (I do a fair bit of business in China).

It's really not that hard to get through.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

I don't see why he would need to use a VPN outside of China, he was a college student over here.

You say "It's well known among the Chinese that VPNs can be used quite easily to get through the firewall" but the FT article says VPNs have been blocked in the past, matching his experience. We can posit all sorts of reasons that permit your two experiences to coexist in the universe, including that his traffic originated from a residence where yours may have originated from a hotel frequented by foreigners and maybe in a different city, that you got lucky in your sample times, that he got unlucky in his sample times, that once blocked he didn't spend a lot of time trying to get through just so he could access FB and that that didn't apply to you because you were never blocked, you got lucky with proxy service and he got unlucky, etc., etc., etc.

The FT article contradicting your 'no problems with VPN ever ever' is from January 2015 but it isn't imaginary.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I haven't denied that VPNs have been blocked in the past - it most definitely happens. And my experiences are minimal to the fact that Chinese people themselves are regularly using VPNs, and by their accounts, it's quite easy to get through the firewall to use Facebook etc.

As for the article saying something different - articles are often exaggerated, out of date, based on misinformation and other things that can make them not entirely accurate.

If you want to know the truth of it, talk to some Chinese in China. They'll tell you what I am - because they are the ones that told me.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This is really disappointing to hear.. I wouldn't mind so much if we had a bigger selection than what we get in Japan currently, but we don't..

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Shonanbb, check for a DNS leak as well.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Strangerland: ... As for the article saying something different - articles are often exaggerated, out of date, based on misinformation and other things that can make them not entirely accurate. ... If you want to know the truth of it, talk to some Chinese in China. They'll tell you what I am - because they are the ones that told me.

Besides the fact that my cousin is a Chinese living in China, in effect I'm already ' ...

Besides the fact that you can find other articles more recent than last January by searching news.google.com for 'China VPN' or google for 'GFW auto-learning' ...

Besides the fact that FT.com is Financial Times. not a hack blog ...

There's this interesting notion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/2y3qxk/the_gfw_vpn_block_speculation_on_how_its_done/

The GFW VPN block: Speculation on how it's done (self.China) submitted 10 months ago * by duddha

I'm not a network engineer, but I'm interested in how network monitoring and manipulation can be done on such a large scale. So forgive me for my limited understanding on this and please chime in if you know more about this topic.

It's common knowledge now that the GFW is using machine learning algorithms and deep packet inspection techniques to find HTTP/PTP patterns in PPTP, IPSec and L2TP/IPSec encrypted packets. ...

First response to this post, when responses are 'sorted by best':

[deleted] 8 points 10 months ago: On a scarier level, I suspect they operate some of the more popular VPNs. Why wouldn't they? It's a cheap way to monitor people. The CIA did this with SafeWeb.

So maybe China doesn't care if you or your friends are using VPNs because you're using THEIR VPNs and they're logging all your traffic. Why should China care if you use FB, as long as they can snoop your good stuff?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

There's no way they'll make the same content available world-wide. Japan releases movies from a week to two years later than in the US and other countries, so imagine if you're only paying a few hundred yen a month and getting movies that have not even hit the theaters here yet (not to mention cable television being YEARS behind, if they have the shows at all).

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I believe that the proxy/VPN is only one of the checks that they can do to verify your location. The thing is that they should do what Apple iTunes does, as long as you have a verifiable credit card from the country that you are trying to access, you are OK. The article reads "...no longer be able to use proxies to watch content not available in their home country." Well, may "home country" is the US...I am only accessing Netflix from abroad.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Home-Country = current location of the viewer, they could care less about expats or holiday makers that access from another country.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

I think I am paying about 1000 yen or so per month. I remember paying 700 yen for a single new release movie on VHS. Talk about technology and resulting deflation!

2 ( +2 / -0 )

You can vote me down, I don't work for Netflix.

They are a business and worry only about their bottom-line while trying to prevent pirate copies being made of their stuff. If the lose some subscribers doing so .....

Rather than complaining on forums contact Netflix directly, they don't read forums .

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The reason most people use Netflix is to watch international programs. There are quite a few on the Japanese site but not enough to make it worthwhile. I'm sure that Netflix is going to lose a large percentage of its customers from doing this.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

What Joe said, most of their viewership doesn't even know you can fool Netflix by using a VPN, and those who do, will figure out how to do it again. I find the monthly fee pretty cheap and worth while, and throwing a tantrum because a company tries to stop you from taking advantage of a loophole is borderline childish.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I'm sure that Netflix is going to lose a large percentage of its customers from doing this.

Really? I'm always amazed at how people think their group is the majority. The thought that their particular circumstances might actually be a minority situation never occurs to them.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

What's interesting is that if they KNEW that they could turn this on or turn it off, why have they left it on for so long? They were trying to make money from people using proxies while saying that they weren't allowing people from to see their service all along. Now that they have started offering their service in all these other countries, they know that they can make money by making you buy it in countries you live in, like Japan (even though it's not the same selection). Hulu used to not allow people using proxies to access their site, then, they changed and let people access through proxies. The bottom line is how much money they can make, while still making it LOOK LIKE they prevent people from other countries from accessing their service. What a bunch of bull!

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The unelected Chinese dictatorship do try to disrupt VPN services. When I was there the only way to access Google was using VPN over SSH. The dictators cannot disrupt that without also disrupting internet commerce, banking etc.

I won't be bothering with Netflix and their "not available in your country" nonsense. With torrents everything is available in my country.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

\(^o^)/ Torrents!!!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I found another way to view ABC in America from Japan, as my VPN is not pulling through, although I have not tried hitting on it from various countries yet. I tend to stick with the same areas to connect due to speed.

I tried Google CHrome and HOLA. My first three attempts failed, but on the fourth try with refreshing and telling Hola, "No it did not work" I got through. I was able to watch 20/20.

My DNS and other portal settings are set according to the guy I was chatting to live from PIA. Will definitely write them again though.

And Dan, I agree.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This is a market failure, companies failing to deliver what people want and would actually pay for.

People paying for VPNs should be paying the companies providing whatever it is they want to watch or listen to.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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