It was bound to happen sooner or later…
Netflix has announced that they will begin cracking down on those who use proxies or “unblockers” to access content outside of their geographic region.
Of course, many expats use these tricks to get the version of Netflix from their home country. I love being able to have US Netflix titles in Argentina rather than the Argentine content. It’s also nice to switch to other countries to get content that is not licensed for your area.
Netflix announced these coming crackdowns in a blog post that lamented that they could not offer the same content across all regions “given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories.” They also stated that they keep pushing towards that goal, but I would not expect any changes there for many years.
Netflix has been pretty lax on blocking these unblockers in the past. They had the technology to do more, but chose not to – because it was not in their best interest. Now it seems that the media owners have finally forced their hand.
We’ll have to see if the unblockers and proxies can come up with new technological solutions to get around these new blocks.
Let’s hope Netflix does not start to eliminate the sharing of account passwords!