A few hundred customers of Docom's cable company Kabelnoord had to go without Netflix for two days last week. Americans discovered abuse of their video service. But what does this violation mean?
Nick Gilhoed, director of Kabelnoord, said on Tuesday that he knew nothing about Netflix's motives. “We asked but got no answer.”
As it appears now the siege As a result of the use of proxy servers and VPN connections by Kabelnoord customers, as evidenced by Dokkum's Jouke Douwe de Vries tweet and also by reports from the cable company itself. According to them, the following message was displayed to users: “It looks like you are using an unblocker or proxy.”
Why is this a problem?
Netflix shows Varies by country and region . Series and films produced by the company itself can be watched all over the world, but for films and series that are not self-produced e.g. Too bad And Sons of Anarchy , Netflix must buy the rights for each country. As a result, you can watch more and different series in England or the USA, for example, than here in the Netherlands. For comparison: about 1,800 series and films can be watched in the Netherlands, and another 4,000 in the United States.
If you want to circumvent this, you can use a proxy server or VPN connection. This redirects Internet traffic and makes it appear to Netflix servers as if the user were somewhere, for example, in the US instead of Dokkum or Kollum.
Netflix is keen to object to this, as it must adhere to deals with production companies from which it buys films and series. Thus the IP address of these viewers is blocked.
Have you watched all Kabelnoord clients blocked via VPN?
It's hard to say. According to Gilhoed, customers who did not try to circumvent regional differences were also affected. However, Netflix not only blocked the VPN users' IP addresses, but also blocked a series of subsequent IP addresses. Since Kabelnoord is a relatively small company, many customers are affected by this blockage.
Why blocking has become so widespread is a mystery to Geelhoed. “I don't see the logic. These agents have nothing to do with each other.”
Moreover, Netflix's ambition is to equalize viewing worldwide. How long this will take, or whether it will work at all, remains shrouded in mystery.
