US streaming giant Netflix is gearing up to its Australian launch and in the lead up has reportedly begun to crack down on foreign subscribers accessing the US service using software to bypass geo-blocks.
Reports the Sydney Morning Herald, the crackdown started over the last few weeks in the Christmas break as several VPN providers – software used to bypass geo-blocks – reported that Netflix had blocked their IP addresses.
“This is a brand new development,” Ben Van der Pelt of VPN providers TorGuard told TorrentFreak. “A few weeks ago we received the first report from a handful of clients that Netflix blocked access due to VPN or proxy usage. This is the first time I’ve heard Netflix displaying this type of error message to a VPN user.”
Australian content providers have long complained about Netflix’s seeming ambivalence towards geo-block beating foreign users and earlier this year Netflix’s director of corporate communications and technology admitted that tracking down these users was not a priority for the service.
However, according to Torrent Freak a leaked draft of the content protection agreement Sony Pictures prepared for Netflix earlier this year specifically requires Netflix to verify that registered users are indeed residing in the right countries. Failure to do so could result in Sony not giving Netflix the rights to its content.
It is estimated that Netflix already has up to 200,000 Australian subscribers who access the US site using geo-block bypassing software. The service is due to officially launch in Australia in March but due to licensing agreements is likely to have different content to that of the US version, making it less attractive to Australian users.
