Until earlier this year Netflix didn’t really clamp down on VPN users like the way its rivals had, but soon after it announced its expansion to almost every country on the planet in January, Netflix has seriously clamped down on users who bypass geo-restrictions through VPNs. While it has been criticized for this the online streaming giant’s CEO isn’t losing any sleep over VPN users.
Netflix might be available in almost all countries but it doesn’t offer the same content in all markets. Most users like to use VPN to access the U.S. version of Netflix since it offers the most amount of content, but Netflix doesn’t own the rights to stream all of its content in all of its markets.
This means that those who own the rights to the content can push Netflix to clamp down on VPN users who are hiding their location to watch content that Netflix doesn’t have the right to stream in their region. Netflix didn’t really make that big of a deal of this initially but it’s got serious about keeping those users out since the past few months.
When asked if the company was worried about threats from VPN users that they would stop subscribing to Netflix and turn to piracy, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that “it’s really inconsequential to us,” adding that VPN users are a very small but quite vocal minority.
Much to the chagrin of VPN users, it appears that Netflix is in no mood to reverse this ban on them.
Filed in . Read more about Entertainment and Netflix. Source: wired