Netflix crackdown on border hoppers could kill some unblocking companies

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-crackdown-unblocking-1.3487368

by empressplay • 10 years ago

98 131 10 years ago

lauritz• 10 years ago

Out of sheer curiosity: Does anyone know/suspect if Netflix is actually using techniques in addition to blocking IPs of known proxy/vpn/unblocking services? Because I would imagine that is a bit like fighting a hydra, very labor- and cost-intensive, yet they are getting excellent results (apparently, still, the sample of people who complain and thus get media coverage is pretty biased).

Is anyone with a 'homegrown' vpn tunnel experiencing issues? I could also think of a solution involving cookies/fingerprinting that detects if someone's geolocation moves around quicker and more often than is physically possible.

I'm sure the technology is under tight wraps, and I'm also sure that other companies will be dying to license this from Netflix if they get it right, even if it's just a lengthy list of IPs (e.g. the BBC for iPlayer).

tshtf• 10 years ago

It isn't fighting a hydra.

The Netflix team is known for using reproducible automation in all their efforts. They have a significant "big data" team that can use and setup automatic classification using hundreds of available data points to classify users who are violating their ToS versus those who aren't. Netflix doesn't do anything that is labor or cost intensive: they have all of this automated.

Even approaching this from a naive set of data points is cheap: It isn't particularly hard to classify IP addresses between cable modem blocks and those for VPS/VPN providers. Geolocation on a country level is relatively reliable. Also it's pretty easy to detect OpenVPN users on layers 2 and 3.:

https://medium.com/@ValdikSS/detecting-vpn-and-its-configura...

baby• 10 years ago

I don't see how they could block VPN at all. Checking the amount of packet fragmentation works well if you want to make guesses, but if you start blocking on that you're in a lot of trouble...

cheez2• 10 years ago

It's not super hard..

Customer has an address in country X, they're accessing from country X and Y in the same day. Probably block.

tschuy• 10 years ago

I'm currently ueing my family's account while abroad in France. Should I get blocked?

dorfsmay3• 10 years ago

I don't think that's how they do it (yet). Netflix and the proxy companies are playing cat and mouse, when Netflix blocks them they tweak something and it works again for a couple of weeks, regardless of the address on the account.

vbezhenar• 10 years ago

I live in Kazakhstan and I regularly use my Netherlands VPN. I tried to use Netflix months ago, and I often switched between connections. Didn't got any blocks or even warnings.

cr18954• 10 years ago

I'm from the US, I've paid for US Netflix for at least 6-7 years, but now I live in the Netherlands. I'm forced to use Dutch Netflix, where my US subscription isn't, for example, paying for those who write the Dutch subtitles.

benologist2• 10 years ago

The unblocker services use a DNS server to present you as being from another location, Netflix is only making it hard to pirate without incurring the bandwidth costs too - we were only paying $2/month to adfreetime.com for 3 people.

johansch2• 10 years ago

DNS doesn't work that way.

What these DNS-based unblocking services do is to selectively point certain hostnames to their own IPs, where they run TCP tunnels to the actual service.

mcbridematt• 10 years ago

There was a report on the NANOG list of customers being flagged for VPN use while using an account in two countries simultaneously, but if one used another account from those IPs, there is no issue.

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-January/083833...

I suspect this type of analysis plays a bigger role than most people think.

i.e A user jumping back and forth between US and Australian Netflix - faster than 'physically' possible, would act as a VPN flag.

Personally I had to change the end point of my home made VPN, but have not had any issues since. As a precaution, I have avoided region jumping. If I did, I would try and leave a realistic gap between any access.

copperx• 10 years ago

I share my Netflix account with my sister who lives in Mexico, and we haven't had problems ... yet.

j00pY• 10 years ago

I am in the UK and have my user profile always set to the USA. It has been this way pretty much since I joined in 2013. I have not been blocked yet. My girlfriends user profile jumped between USA and UK all the time and was blocked when they started to crack down. Strangely, these two profiles both use the same registered account and unblock.us to switch regions.

Element_• 10 years ago

Yes, they are using some kind of heuristics in addition to ip ban lists. I was using an openvpn instance on a private US server which was working fine until a couple weeks ago when I didn't notice the VPN connection dropped and accidentally reconnected from 2 different countries quickly. It banned me immediately.

SeanDav2• 10 years ago

Netflix may well win this, but then everyone just goes pirate and Netflix loses masses of subscribers. These companies just do not get it....

intrasight• 10 years ago

The benefits to Netflix for playing by the rules outstrips the loss to pirates.

erkkie• 10 years ago

Netflix "gets it" very well, they have to tiptoe between satisfying their content providers with plausible-enough looking action and at the same time trying to not alienate their end-users. They probably know the exact numbers of their chosen paths and have chosen optimally (for now).

kazinator• 10 years ago

Internet-based companies want borders when it benefits them, and want the network to be without borders or geographic locations when that benefits them.

icebraining2• 10 years ago

Actually, the Internet-based company (Netflix) probably doesn't want this, as they'll lose money. The media companies want this, and Netflix has to deliver if they want to keep their distribution rights.

Mikeb85• 10 years ago

While everyone's busy blaming Netflix, the reality is they're just covering their own asses, complying with the content laws of the jurisdictions in which they're operating.

DrJokepu• 10 years ago

This is not really about compliance. They license their content from their media partners and these licensing agreements state in which territories they are allowed to use the licensed content. Their media partners are contractually requiring them to take steps to block the usage of their content outside the licensed territories.

Keep in mind that the party who has licensed Netflix a production to be used in e.g. the US might not even have the rights to the same production in e.g. the UK.

amorphid• 10 years ago

Licensing can get really lame. Amazon has (or at least had) seasons 1, 2, and 4 of a show I watched. I had to go elsewhere to find season 3. I never went back for season 4.

terryf3• 10 years ago

I realise that they're probably just covering their asses, but it really sucks to live in a small country that none of the distributors care about.

The Estonian netflix catalogue is on the order of 500? titles... ridiculous compared to the US catalogue. In the US you have "watch on amazon prime" buttons in imdb. In Estonia, no such luck.

Essentially, there is no legal way at all to watch the vast majority of movies here. And people wonder why piracy happens a lot around here...

giarc• 10 years ago

no legal way at all to watch the vast majority of movies here.

You could buy them.

terryf3• 10 years ago

You'd think so, but unfortunately I can't, again, for some, I can, yes, but the selection is vastly reduced.

Essentially, if you search for movie dvds on amazon and ship them to an US address with a US credit card, then the selection is at least 10x, if not 100x larger than when I try to buy them.

Nevermind of course the time it takes to order things online and then have them ship the dvd, which I don't really want anyway, but fair enough, that's just convenience.

So, the problem is not that I'm not wiling to pay for it, the problem is that nobody will take my money, because the movie studio hasn't signed a redistributor for that movie in my region.

jimbobimbo2• 10 years ago

You could buy a localized version, which is not that same thing. Try watching a Schwarzenegger movie with a bad voice cast. :(

nommm-nommm• 10 years ago

Most of the time you can't. You can't buy something that's explicitly and on purpose not available for purchase in your country. That is the whole point. Even if you were to find someone willing to import American DVDs to Estonia, the movie studios have region code lockout codes on DVD players to prevent that!

mikekchar• 10 years ago

It wasn't all that long ago that it was impossible to legally get Japanese content in the US. They just wouldn't take your money. It wasn't until scanlators and fansubbers created a large market that the Japanese producers took foreign markets seriously. Even then, I have been told by reputable sources that companies like Viz used to pay about $1000 per volume with no royalties for North American English language rights to manga. Japanese producers just didn't believe it was worth any amount of money in foreign countries. Of course that has changed dramatically now.

I'm hoping as we move to a global market with digital distribution, these dinosaur companies will realize that there is no risk to handling world wide distribution themselves. But it means killing the distributors (who were the businesses that helped you get that content when nobody else was listening...).

cm21873• 10 years ago

Majors don't want your money. They are making so much money since the birth of internet and p2p that they can afford to turn down business.

beedogs• 10 years ago

Then they should no longer care about piracy.

seanp2k23• 10 years ago

It's much more an issue of licensing availability: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/global-licens...

sireat• 10 years ago

What was really silly that Netflix pride and joy House of Cards was not available in the Baltics on Netflix until recently.

DasIch2• 10 years ago

Season 4 is still not available in Germany on Netflix.

redler2• 10 years ago

It's plausible that licensing agreements prevent some content from being shown in some markets. But what could possibly be the reason for Netflix holding back its own content — content that directly drives subscription revenue — in other markets?

seanp2k23• 10 years ago

Netflix doesn't own most of HoC or OitNB: http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/netflix-to-own-original-...

kyriakos• 10 years ago

Same here in Cyprus, the catalog is pathetic. I am using an unblocker for now once it stops working Netflix will become useless to me and I'll cancel. We're too small to make a difference to Netflix even if all subscribers stop paying we're just a rounding error in their accounts. The change will come from larger markets and from EU who is trying to kill geo blocking within Europe.

terryf3• 10 years ago

Yep, I already cancelled, it seems the one I was using (smartflix) won't be back soon.

elcct• 10 years ago

At least you don't have to stare in to a potato like in Latvia. Actually an imagination of a potato just before you die...

ehnto• 10 years ago

I live in Australia and our catalogue is disappoining. We are practically US 2.0 and the publishers still can't figure out a way to strike a deal.

Just copy and paste your contracts, replace America with Australia and away you go. /s

sound_of_basker• 10 years ago

Content sources typically charge per region. The more the subscribers per region, the better is Netflix chances of broadening the catalogue in that region. It is a tough problem that has several facets. Prime move, capturing a subscription base, marketing, campaigning, trials, licenses, sourcing, regional law compliance (nudity/violence etc.), infrastructure, etc.

Am not saying as a consumer you are wrong. But a perspective from the other side at least partially covers the why.

AnAfrican• 10 years ago

I'm optimistic.

For smaller and poorer markets, there are plenty of content with no distribution deal in place.

So Netflix could be the only way to make any money in those markets.

Those catalogues will grow bigger. Possibly bigger than the catalogues in Big market where there is competition.

Udo2• 10 years ago

The ability for and dedication to self sabotage is really astonishing with these old media companies (in this case channeled through Netflix). The sad thing is this affects only people who are still somehow determined to actually buy their content instead of straight-up pirating it.

shmerl• 10 years ago

Indeed. DRM and geoblocking are hurting only their loyal customers and themselves.

e40• 10 years ago

It is likely a requirement of some contract they have with content producers, who have Netflix over a barrel. I can't see them just deciding to do this all on their own.

Udo2• 10 years ago

"[...] with these old media companies (in this case channeled through Netflix) [...]"

edandersen• 10 years ago

I setup a VPN on a private AWS EC2 instance in Tokyo. Netflix still detected it. They are not messing around.

andor• 10 years ago

They didn't detect your VPN connection, they simply block AWS IP ranges.

iamlolz• 10 years ago

The same thing happened to my digital ocean VPN.

nicolas_t• 10 years ago

For now, the few times I've used it with a vpn it still worked fine. The day when Netflix blocks me completely, I will cancel my subscription

dorfsmay3• 10 years ago

Same here. The catalog in Canada isn't worth it. Once the proxy companies lose, I'll cancel Netflix. No I will not go to the cinema, I will not buy the DVDs. The media company will just lose the revenue from me and people similar to me for those movies.

dorfsmay3• 10 years ago

I seriously don't understand what the movie companies are trying to do. People who think going to the cinema is special and add something to the experience already go to the cinema. For the rest of us, we see it on Netflix or Amazon or whatever or we will either not see it or pirate it.

L-four• 10 years ago

Most of the time another company has a exclusive license for the region.

josteink2• 10 years ago

So the movie companies are making deals they know 1. goes against everything the market wants and 2. will promote piracy.

And then they complain about piracy. Cry me a river. Seriously.

reuven• 10 years ago

I'm frustrated that Netflix is cracking down in this way. And yet, I can't say that I'm surprised. They are trying to amass as much content as possible, and doing so means that Netflix has to demonstrate that they're trying to enforce the regional exclusivity agreements.

For me, as a consumer who has been using an unblocking system for more than two years, and who would like to continue to see Amazon's content, I'm rooting for the unblockers.

But I wonder whether the cat-and-mouse game between Netflix and unblocking services is almost inevitably in Netflix's favor, at least as things currently run.

Which leads me to ask if a "cloud VPN appliance" SaaS could work, technically and/or as a business: Customers would click to indicate the country where they want to have a VPN server hosted. The appliance would use Digital Ocean, or some other hosting facility with cheap machines that can be created and destroyed via an API. For a $5/month DO server, charge $15/month. Have the appliance update its software, and/or relocate to another hosting system or IP address, as Netflix detects and blocks that machine.

I have to assume that it would be harder for Netflix to block thousands of such privately used VPN machines than blocks of AWS servers being used for such services.

But yeah, it's unfortunate that because of agreements between movie studios and distribution firms in each country, individuals have to play these sorts of games.

colinbartlett• 10 years ago

Others have reported Netflix blocking IP ranges owned by cloud hosting companies. So this solution might not work. What if it was a peer-to-peer service? Whereby the ultimate exit point was the home internet connection of another subscriber?

icebraining2• 10 years ago

Such a service already exists, it's called Hola[¹]. The problem is that the owners of machines serving as exit nodes are exposing themselves to liability that a regular VPN or VPS service would probably be protected against, and often without even realizing it.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hola_(VPN)

pille2• 10 years ago

I think most people's asymmetric bandwidth rates would get in the way of a p2p solution being usable.

Maybe if there were some way to break the stream up into individual media files, and then you could download one identical file from lots of different users at the same time.

miohtama• 10 years ago

EC2 is blocked

gozur88• 10 years ago

But I wonder whether the cat-and-mouse game between Netflix and unblocking services is almost inevitably in Netflix's favor, at least as things currently run.

I don't see how Netflix or their content producers come out ahead by driving whole national markets to torrent sites. Once you force people onto a pirate distribution channel they're not going to pay even for the titles they could obtain legally.

frik3• 10 years ago

I just buy DVDs/Blue-rays. That way I own the medium, can watch it any time at superior quality (video + audio) and get some bonus content (behind the scene, interviews, deleted scenes, etc.) too. And I watch amateur short clips on YouTube. It's amazing how short sighted average joes are.

iwwr2• 10 years ago

You also get unskippable content and a relatively perishable medium that's difficult to back-up. And region blocking.

jjp• 10 years ago

Makemkv plus Plex covers that one.

frik3• 10 years ago

Really? Tell me more about that.

Btw. I can play some 1983 audio CDs just fine, multimedia CD-ROMs from 1990 and DVDs from 1996. Neither a hard disk nor flash-drive nor an internet service will last that long. Triva: Did you know MySpace.com used to be a online storage service (think of DropBox) during the dot-com bubble, it resurfaced as social media website years later, and years later it rebooted as social media website again (with little success) and you know both first two iterations of content are lost forever. Welcome to reality.

The first new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (max 100 GB) just came out on March 1th.

jawngee• 10 years ago

I'm in Vietnam and unblock-us has been flawless through this whole thing. Except for PayPal cancelling their account.

fr222• 10 years ago

As much as this looks like a result of Netflix attempting to cover their asses with content licensing, the story going around is that this is actually a result of Netflix's freedom and responsibility doctrine. Apparently some asshole engineer internally said he'd be willing to build a proxy blocker, but only if he could do it right.

bryanrasmussen• 10 years ago

is he an asshole because he was willing, only willing if he could do it right, because he is an engineer, or some other reason?

unbelievr• 10 years ago

While I've not been using VPNs for this, and can see why this sucks for a lot of consumers, I can't really feel sad for any unblocking companies that die over this. They were providing a service that were strictly against the TOS of Netflix, akin to creating cheats/bots for online video games. They had to know that this could come to an end.

It's also very clear that Netflix didn't want this, and that it was forced to make this move. (Couldn't find the exact quote, but newspapers have reported this).

The availability is quite sad now, though. Looking at uNoGS[0] and gk2[1], you can quickly see the disparity. USA pays $7.99 to access 5649 videos. Germany pays ~$9 to access 1412. Scandinavia (little to no dubbing) pays ~$9.5 to access 2038 videos. Most countries have half the content of the US, but pay above US prices on average.

So for some time now, EU has basically been subsidizing Netflix for America and Friends. I really hope that our licensing laws will get straightened out soon, although I can't see the movie business wanting to get rid of the middle-man businesses anytime soon. It generates a huge amount of cash.

[0] http://unogs.com/countrydetail/

[1] http://gk2.sk/netflix-content-by-country/

yeldarb• 10 years ago

At least part of that price difference is the EU VAT tax, no? Isn't it something like 15%

Mandatum• 10 years ago

This is whack-a-mole with VPN's.

We'll start to see VPN companies setup auto-rotating IPv6-only networks registered to residential addresses and pseudonyms shortly (if they haven't already) with 2-3 customers per/IP.

VPN's will cater and advertise as "for Netflix" and then the "fight" will shift to copyright takedowns and proxy-lawsuits.

If Netflix continues to crack down and push harder you'll see a lot more false positives/user complaints about being blocked than we currently do.

I sincerely hope they start using their weight to push back.

sdm• 10 years ago

This is pretty much the situation in China with VPNs and GFW. Some providers will specialize in providing ways to get around the locks. They will be able to charge extra for it too and people will pay. Because $7.99 + say $4.99 for the VPN per month is still better than going back to cable. Fortunately, Netflix doesn't appear to be targeting users in China that much. I've use Netflix daily only seen the "something is wrong you appear to be using a proxy message" twice so far. I just switched servers and everything was all right.

mirimir8• 10 years ago

A residential vpn doesn’t use a standard data center like traditional vpn services do. A residential vpn service uses the same local internet service providers that offer dsl and cable to home users. This type of service is very unusual in the vpn arena because normal providers of vpn services do not offer this type of service. It is generally unheard of in the vpn world.
IAPS Security Services, LLC. has gone outside the normal channels and has contracted directly with residential internet service providers to make this type of service possible.

https://www.intl-alliance.com/store/cart.php?gid=15

I have no idea whether or not this is legitimate. Maybe this is another Hola scam. Or worse.

Edit: See https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/27897/vpn-service-that... for amusing discussion.

Edit2: OK, I get it. It's whois games. See http://www.hacker10.com/other-computing/review-scam-vpn-prov... Easy to detect :(

pstrateman• 10 years ago

I closed my Netflix account because of this.

They blocked a VPS which is used by me and only me entirely from within the US.

dewiz• 10 years ago

Someone should build a p2p service to share bandwidth and streaming content

bambax2• 10 years ago

I live in France and have been subscribed to Netflix for many years, with a fake US address (but a French debit card). I access Netflix over a VPN provider.

When Netflix arrived in France I was able to access Netflix without VPN from France, with a different catalog, but retained the access to the US catalog via VPN (without doing anything else: same account, same browser, same session even).

I have seen no change since this move was announced, and therefore doubt if it's real??

cr18954• 10 years ago

I have seen no change since this move was announced, and therefore doubt if it's real??

Are you doubting that they're blocking users who access through a VPN? They certainly are. Maybe your VPN hasn't been blacklisted, but that's not to say it won't be in the future.

bambax2• 10 years ago

My VPN is very mainstream (I'd rather not name it, though, just in case) so it seems unlikely it's not blocked when others are.

The other explanation would be that blocking doesn't apply to "US customers" but only to customers with a non-US physical address?

korginator• 10 years ago

I cancelled my netflix account last week because they cracked down on both my VPN providers. In my country, we legally get around 12-13% of the shows available on the US Netflix.

Paying customers get shafted, and the mega-corps wonder why piracy is rampant.

nwmcsween• 10 years ago

So netflix has gone full circle, people want to move away from cable companies because price/content is crap. Netflix is killing off region hopping thus making price/content crap. Long live piracy

Netflix crackdown on border hoppers could kill some unblocking companies

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