David Fullagar, the VP of content delivery architecture at Netflix, said the company is taking new measures to prevent users from streaming content outside their country.
Netflix is cracking down on the use of “unblockers,” which allow users to circumvent the geographic restrictions on TV shows or movies from outside of their permitted location.
“If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn’t be a reason for members to use proxies or ‘unblockers’ to fool our systems into thinking they’re in a different country than they’re actually in,” Fullagar said. “We are making progress in licensing content across the world and, as of last week, now offer the Netflix service in 190 countries, but we have a ways to go before we can offer people the same films and TV series everywhere.
“Over time, we anticipate being able to do so. For now, given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories, the TV shows and movies we offer differ, to varying degrees, by territory. In the meantime, we will continue to respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location.”
To address the issue, Netflix is employing new security measures, so that those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they are currently. “We are confident this change won’t impact members not using proxies,” Fullagar said.
“We look forward to offering all of our content everywhere and to consumers being able to enjoy all of Netflix without using a proxy. That’s the goal we will keep pushing toward.”
