February 27th/2016
Netflix announced last month, that it would be increasing its effort to block customers who access content that is unavailable in their country by using things like VPN’s and Proxies.
Netflix has continued to expand its VPN and proxy crackdown, which has resulted in it becoming much harder to use VPN services and proxies to stream content from other countries.
Netflix currently blocks IP-addresses that are linked to these services, then serves the following error message to these blocked users.
While the blocks are being rolled out in phases, it’s become clear that many VPN users simply cannot access Netflix, even if the VPN server is located in the same country as they are. For example, Americans that aren’t breaking any rules but who are still using a VPN to protect their privacy will be blocked aswell.
This new approach from Netflix is meeting strong resistance from many sides. So much so that tens-of-thousands of users have recently started to protest the streaming giants expanding VPN & proxy blockade.
Alreaddy more than 33,000 people have signed digital rights organization OpenMedia’s Petition, which urges Netflix to rethink its approach.
Despite the outcry from the public, Netflix said that it’s not worried about subscribers leaving because of the issue. “I don’t think we will see any impact,” CEO Reed Hastings said in a shareholders’ interview last month.
Although they have quite a ways to go, Netflix’s long term goal is to make the entire geo-blocking discussion obsolete, by offering movies and TV-shows worldwide.
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