Netflix users outside the US have not been afraid to speak their minds after the company said it would be cracking down on "unblockers" that circumvent restrictions on where movies and shows can be streamed. In a call with analysts today after the company released its fourth-quarter earnings, CEO Reed Hastings said that he doesn't think the move will hurt the growth of its worldwide subscriber base, which currently numbers 75 million.
"I don't think we'll see any impact," Hastings told investors during a call today. "We've always enforced proxies with a blacklist, now we've got an expanded and enhanced blacklist." Along with the blacklist, he said the company would be using other unspecified techniques to block virtual private networks, better known as VPNs, that allow overseas subscribers to, for example, view Netflix as if they were in the US, where licensing deals often mean a wider selection of content.
But if blocking VPNs won't affect subscriber numbers one way or another, why do it? "You can call it placating—you can call it catering to their desires. You know, they have legitimate desires," Hastings said of content owners. "If we license content in Canada, it's not fair for us or for our customers [who are outside of Canada] to be getting that if we've only paid for Canada."
Suffice to say, not all Netflix users are terribly sympathetic to that argument. Even as the service has expanded to nearly every country in the world (with the notable exception of China), Netflix remains vastly different in different countries. Users in South Korea, Portugal, Israel, and the UK, for example, have all told WIRED they don't have the same wide selection of shows and films as Americans.
While Netflix seems hopeful that its original series and movies will be enough to keep (and bring) users to its service, international users have long complained that in the past not all Netflix originals, such as House of Cards, were even offered internationally. (House of Cards was not originally released in certain European companies due to licensing agreements with local distributors that were made when the company first ventured into originals.)
Hastings did say the company was working to address disparities by hatching global licensing deals. In the meantime, however, Netflix isn't too worried that blocking VPNs will drive more users to pirate the content they will no longer be able to get.
"Geo-filter hacking and piracy are maybe distant cousins at best," Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said. "I think of geo-filter hacking as people hacking to pay whereas piracy is people hacking not to pay."
