There are few industries that can claim to have been disrupted by the Internet as much as the media industry has. In the span of a couple decades they’ve gone from having fine grained control over what content goes where to a world that’s keenly aware of what’s available and will take it if it’s not given to them at the right price. At the same time however we’re far more likely to spend more than we would have done in the media world of the past, just that now we’re asking for much more value for our money. This back and forth battle between the Internet’s innate ability to break down geographical barriers and the rights holder’s business models that rely on them ultimately leaves both sides feeling hard done by, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
The latest shot fired in this battle comes in the form of Netflix cracking down on subscribers that use VPN services to circumvent their geographical restrictions. For countries where the Netflix service is available this is usually done to access the broader catalogue but for places like Australia it’s necessary just to access the service at all. Indeed the user figures for Australia are pretty strong, enough so that a blanket ban on VPN users would see Netflix lose millions of dollars per month in subscriber revenue. The rights holders don’t seem to be to phased about this however likely thinking that we’ll revert to the other, far more expensive, options when our Netflix is taken away from us.
However that’s likely to be the last thing that any of the current Australian Netflix subscribers would do. You see setting up a VPN to get Netflix to work is, whilst not exactly hard, a non-trivial affair, requiring just as much technical know how to set up as your average piracy enabling client. Thus when their legitimate source of media is cut off from them they’ll likely turn to the illegitimate sources, either their old haunts of Usent and Bittorrent or the new world of media piracy provided through Popcorn Time. I honestly don’t know how you’d expect anything different especially considering that Australia consistently rates as the highest consumer of illegitimate media worldwide.
These kinds of idiotic decisions are driven by business models that are simply no longer viable in the Internet driven world. Sure, back in the days when physical media was king there was an argument to be made for this style of business however now, when digital media reigns supreme, it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s not likely consumers are unwilling to pay for it, indeed the hundreds of thousands of Netflix subscribers in Australia is testament to that, it’s that the companies that hold the rights to that media are simply unwilling to provide it. It’s been shown time and time again that should no reasonable cost alternative be provided users will simply turn to other sources and won’t stop until such a service materializes.
Not that it really matters what Netflix, or any other service for that matter, does to try and block people it’s only a matter of time until someone figures out how to defeat the detection methods used, allowing everyone to use it once again. This is a game of cat and mouse that no service provider can win as there are far more individuals out in the Internet’s ether working to crack such schemes than Netflix has to create them. I’m sure eventually the rights holders will come around and give up this crusade to protect their outdated business models but until then things like this are just going to cost them paying consumers and swell the ranks of those filthy pirates who won’t give them one red cent.
