Quickflix Wants Netflix To Drop Australian VPN Users 172
ashshy writes 200,000 Australian residents reportedly use Netflix today, tunneling their video traffic to the US, UK, and other Netflix markets via VPN connections. A proper Netflix Down Under service isn't expected to launch until 2015. Last week, Aussie video streaming company Quickflix told Netflix to stop this practice, so Australian viewers can return to Quickflix and other local alternatives. But Quickflix CEO Stephen Langsford didn't explain how Netflix could restrict Australian VPN users, beyond the IP geolocating and credit card billing address checks it already runs. Today, ZDNet's Josh Taylor ripped into the absurdity of Quickflix's demands. From the article: "If Netflix cuts those people off, they're going to know that it was at the behest of Foxtel and Quickflix, and would likely boycott those services instead of flocking to them. If nothing else, it would encourage those who have tried to do the right thing by subscribing and paying for content on Netflix to return to copyright infringement."
International Copyright (Score:2)
Why is Netflix not available in Australia?
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According to TFS Quickflix apparently wants to.
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
Quickflix's biggest shareholder is an Nine Entertainment, which appears to be their ticketmaster and clearchannel equivalent. They don't appear to be a telco but they do seem likely to be in bed with them.
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There's some Murdoch ownership there, via Sky, owned mainly by Mordoch like Foxtel is. Whether the link is enough to set policy is a bit of a guess but Rupert has a habit of taking a very active interest in anything he owns a part of and tends to have influence far beyond his level of ownership in some things.
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Quickflix's biggest shareholder is an Nine Entertainment, which appears to be their ticketmaster and clearchannel equivalent. They don't appear to be a telco but they do seem likely to be in bed with them.
Nine Entertainment is closer to Time Warner than Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is our Ticketmaster.
Also Nine Entertainment is going broke.
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Thank you for checking on that. I was basing my statement on wikipedia, which is obviously outdated at best.
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such as by effectively killing the NBN which would provide a high speed network allowing people to stream TV, movies etc in 4K, thereby rendering Foxtel unneeded.
Re: International Copyright (Score:2)
Australian here. See above; QuickFlix has to pay for the AU regional licenses for whatever paltry content the owners are willing to spare, while Netflix only pays for the US license (cheaper per view & much more content) but collects a *lot* of AU viewers too.
Hard to blame QuickFlix for feeling bitter, but it's the content owners that created the situation with the huge discrepancies between their region licenses.
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Why is Netflix not available in Australia?
A combination of licencing arrangements with existing distributors and the fact that the market size makes for a not so attractive business opportunity.
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"Licensing issues" seems to be the standard reply. But, why would licensing in Australia be different from licensing elsewhere? Isn't a show streamed to Australia is just as profitable as a show streamed to Europe or America?
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
"Licensing issues" seems to be the standard reply. But, why would licensing in Australia be different from licensing elsewhere? Isn't a show streamed to Australia is just as profitable as a show streamed to Europe or America?
Yes, but Netflix must sign and *pay for* a license in each separate territory. The company pays per show/movie, per market, per year (or whatever licensing timeframe), and it doesn't make sense to roll out an actual service until you have the rights to a decent content library in that new territory.
Netflix is working on licenses for Australia, but doesn't have a service yet. And whatever agreements it did sign so far likely don't become active until Launch Date X.
So as usual, it all boils down to costs. Follow the money.
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I get that Netflix won't launch in Australia without licenses. So why don't they have licenses? Why can't they get them?
The only substantive answer I've heard so far is that the companies sold decades-long *exclusive* licenses to someone else. That might tie into your statement "And whatever agreements it did sign so far likely don't become active until Launch Date X." So the implication is that they *can* get licenses, but they won't kick-in until someone else's exclusive license expires? And why was
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They can get them, usually. It just takes time and money to negotiate for them. Eventually they'll have enough and then they can open up service.
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They can normally license with the holder of the exclusive rights, but in many cases said holder sees netflix as competition and thus wants to charge huge rates for said licenses. That's where time to conduct negotiations comes in. It doesn't make sense for netflix to sign a licensing agreement where the cost is $12/month per netflix customer, after all. Even $1 a customer per year gets quite dear.
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Best guess: the content creators use it as a way to extort more money out of people.
Why go for "just as profitable" when you can have "more profitable". If we can't get more profit, we're not licensing it to you.
The companies who own the content and are in charge of licensing see people as nothing more than a revenue stream, and want to be able to control what you see so it's on their terms.
In other words, greedy assholes.
There's
Re:International Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep hearing "greed" but that is a copout. Greedy people do not refuse to license their products for decades.
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
They do if they believe that the new channel will cannibalize their existing channels (DVDs) and produce lower net revenue.
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Yeah, that makes sense in a sad way. I suppose the music industry thought the same way for a while. Eventually, illegal music distribution services convinced them otherwise. Now, VPN connections are the equivalent for streaming video.
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I keep hearing "greed" but that is a copout. Greedy people do not refuse to license their products for decades.
Its not the license sellers that are greedy here, its the companies who bought the licenses that are greedy. Companies like Nine and Foxtel in Australia paid for an exclusive license and will hold the licenser to that agreement. Foxtel especially hates competition, they are presently scrotum deep in trying to get ISP's in Australia to start policing users for them (ISP's are blocking this at every turn).
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It's called monopoly activity. Someone gets in early and buys up all control because they believe they will be able to charge more than the rest of market by establishing a monopoly. With regard to copyright this also ties into killing the distribution of independent content by turning broadband into overpriced strangle band to make it too expensive for them to digitally distribute content. Now tie this into corruption of government and corrupt three strikes laws disconnected from the net and threats of c
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Interesting. So maybe they don't want Netflix to cut into DVD sales if DVD sales are more profitable in Australia than they are in the US. That would be a valid reason.
A simpler answer (Score:2)
Your second point is not correct or relevant since people are already using Netflix in Australia despite deliberate steps being made to stop them.
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Funny)
It would take too much resources to re-encode all the movies upside-down.
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It's re-rendering the toilets to flush the other way that'll cost more!
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Most Aussies have screens that rotate mate.
Clockwise, or anti-clockwise?
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Because generally the rightsholders sign exclusive contracts with a company in each "market" (usually either a single country or a small group of countries). The result is netflix can't just go to the original creator of the content and buy a worldwide license, they have to buy licenses for each "market" from whoever controls the rights in that market.
So if netflix want's to enter a new market (e.g. australia) they have to start their negotiations for content largely from scratch (there may be some indie co
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Why is Netflix not available in Australia?
The population of Australia is 24 million. The population of metropolitan New York City, 20 to 24 million, depending on how you choose to define it. If you want a presence in the Asian-Pacific market, Australia doesn't loom large in your thinking.
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Netflix is available in Canada, and we're 35 million, not much more than Australia.
Installing their CDNs in Australia should cost about the same as anywhere else.
So it's probably license related (or should I say license retarded)
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Which is part of the 'problem' Australians experience - their local companies have enough influence to pass standards at least somewhat unique to Australia, as well as have some of the tougher media controls, yet they're not big enough for most companies to put forth the effort to comply with them, which leaves them lagging.
Not like that at all (Score:2)
I know you gun nuts think it's gone all Thunderdome over here since we restricted automatic weapons, but could you please refrain from making up utter bullshit about us on every fucking topic under the sun?
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This is what I always here, same with Anime. But I don't understand why this is hard. Why would the rights be harder to secure in Australia versus anywhere else in the world? Why would a content provider care about geography? Isn't money made from streaming to someone in Australia the same as money made from streaming to someone in the US? When Walmart wants to sell Proctor and Gamble shampoo in the US, Proctor and Gamble profits. Why would P&G not want Walmart to sell shampoo in Australia? Or th
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not hard from a technology perspective, and it never has been.
It's hard from a "these corporations are greedy bastards" perspective. They want to maximize profits. Pure and simple.
If that means telling the consumer "no, you can't have our product until we can figure out how to sell it to you for more money", they're OK with that.
You don't need to look beyond money, because technology isn't the roadblock here.
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"Those greedy bastards" don't make money by refusing to license their products. There must be some real concrete reason.
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If the return on investment doesn't exceed the cost of setting up the licensing and distribution rights, it won't happen. Even then, it has to exceed costs by a high enough amount, otherwise the entities involved will focus their efforts on something else that's more lucrative. But they're not going to just let people access the content, because it might become profitable enough at some point.
To me, this is the biggest disappointment of the Internet. If I want to watch the local news in some other part o
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If the return on investment doesn't exceed the cost of setting up the licensing and distribution rights, it won't happen.
That part seems logical. But I am amazed that "licensing and distribution" would be so expensive that it would exceed the value of millions of people viewing their content. That sounds like the companies are becoming inefficient. Their own internal paperwork is so complex and expensive that they can't deploy their own product. Ouch, that's really wacky.
Even then, it has to exceed costs by a high enough amount, otherwise the entities involved will focus their efforts on something else that's more lucrative
I get that. I work for a company that decided to can a perfectly functioning and completed product because the regulatory requirements for a particular
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It isn't, but that's the excuse. A few years back it was shown in a Mac laptop review that it would be cheaper to fly from Sydney to Hawaii for a five day holiday and buy the laptop over there than to buy it in Sydney. That's an extreme, but there are many items sold at inflated prices with flimsy excuses, especially when you still have to pay a markup for a download edition of some software just because of the
In case it didn't make sense (Score:2)
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No it was Apple, but ... (Score:2)
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The article you're probably thinking of is this one [slashdot.org]. It was effectively Adobe's response to an inquiry into software pricing by the ACCC (Australian equivalent of the FTC) last year (along with claiming that the increased cost was due to language translations...last I checked we speak English here).
Apple's AU tax is 10%, which doesn't make traveling to the US even remotely economic.
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Less than 10%...Slashcode ate the sign.
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Its been claimed (I didn't actually check but from a reputable source) that it's cheaper for me to buy a built in Canada car by driving south 30 miles to the closest American airport, fly to Hawaii, purchase the manufactured in Canada car and ship it back including doing the paper work and paying the duty and taxes.
On the other hand yesterday the CBC radio show Q had an interview with whats his name from the daily show and they had to geopolitically block it to only stream from youtube and cbc.ca to Canada.
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I think Australia just isn't big enough. It doesn't represent enough money or enough people. It's small enough that the gatekeepers might not give a damn. Screwing over the whole continent is not that big of a loss for them.
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Considering they're a pretty high income country, with tastes similar to the rest of the 'Dominion', it doesn't make sense at all.
But, what's the peering arrangement that Netflix would need to operate in Australia? Would it be something they could afford to do realistically?
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I think it is distribution rights, copyright rights. Netflix would have to pay the right entities so you could watch that movie
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I often wonder if it's not a "why make $30 million now when we might be able to make $300 million later" kind of deal.
By committing to a licensing deal now, they're stuck with it.
But I've definitely heard many Aussie's lamenting that you pay much more for the same thing there than you do here, and the corporations we're talking about really don't do anything unless it's maximizing profits.
So, if it's a company like Sony who is refusing to license the content ... then I can only assume it isn't, and never ha
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That reason is Foxtel. It buys up the rights to everything at hugely inflated prices, and then charges an arm and a leg for consumers to get it.
Want Games of Thrones as it's released? Foxtel is the only legal game in town.
Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
Why would a content provider care about geography?
Mostly decades-long exclusive distribution contracts that predate the Internet.
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Re:International Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
TV networks in various countries buy exclusive rights to distribute the program in thier country (or sometimes a group of countries, for example EU regs mean you can't really limit a license to an individual country in the EU).
The primary rightsholder can't sell rights to distribute the program worldwide to netflix because they have already sold exclusive rights to distribute it in particular countries to various TV networks.
So getting rights to show programs in australia requires a totally new set of negotiations with totally different parties to getting rights to show those same shows in the US.
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Thank you. That is the first actual substantive answer I've had on this topic. Every other reply is "because licensing" or "because greed."
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You realize the distillation of that answer is the same? Licensing and greed.
Licensing is the direct cause, but greed is the reason there were exclusivity agreements to begin with.
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I wasn't looking for a distilled answer. I really wanted to know what specifically is the problem. If the licenses are locked-up by exclusive agreements with existing broadcasters, then I can understand the problem. Netflix might only be able to solve that by buying out the broadcasters. I wonder if the broadcasters could let the content providers break the contract, in exchange for some agreement. Or if they can sub-license the rights back to Netflix, and profit as a middleman.
Q: Why does this code no
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Licensing is the direct cause, but greed is the reason there were exclusivity agreements to begin with.
I disagree. Networks seek exclusivity agreements to reduce risk, it's standard business practice for large companies. Without there's a chance their investment will be suddenly worthless as another network shows the same content, so they pay a premium for certainty.
Of course everything in capitalism is greed in some sense, even the salary you as a worker can ask for from your employee. There's a fine line between standard market practices and profiteering.
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This is what I always here, same with Anime. But I don't understand why this is hard.
Anime is a whole other matter. Japanese media companies are insanely risk-averse. If they know they can guarantee a sell-out run of 20,000 BD units at 6,000 Yen a piece for Anime X in Japan only, that's all they'll do. Won't run 25,000 units and hope for selling 23,000 at full retail.
Keeping with this, they also charge an arm and a leg to foreign companies to want to translate and distribute outside Japan. Since media costs are lower in, say, the USA, they worry that Japanese fans will wait until the cheape
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Pope: Thank you for a detailed answer. I'm tired of stupid responses like "xenophobia and stupidity." I expected some AC responses like that, but the registered users doing it is quite maddening.
Captive market (Score:2)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:2)
You'd think that such companies touting themselves as the masters of the new way of doing business would refrain from the very monopolistic manoeuvres they have been criticizing all along. You'd think...
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Given a chance, I believe any company would seek a monopoly.
Given the chance to force consumers to use your product, I think the people who run corporations would jump at it.
But if you think forcing me to subscribe to your product instead of the competitor I was already happy with ... you'd have to be a complete idiot, and I think these people might be.
This isn't anything other than trying to force people to use your service, even if your service isn't as good or people aren't interested in it. And that do
Idiots ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So they want a competitor to cut off customers which they can't serve (or because they can't compete)?
If your service is good and it's what people want, you will survive. If it isn't, and people go elsewhere ... too damned bad. If I was dealing with a company, and their competitor made them stop providing me service, there is no way in hell I'd go with the competitor, since they effectively blocked me from getting the service I do want.
This just sounds like "waah, we can't compete with Netflix, so Netflix needs to stop serving the customers we haven't been able to attract". Screw that. Your "local alternative" may not be as good, and the consumer shouldn't be forced into using your crappy product just because you say so.
I'd be seriously pissed at Quickflix for being self entitles assholes. And I sure as hell wouldn't do business with them.
Why do companies feel they are entitled to our business? I'll do business with whomever I want.
These clowns sound like candidates for the B-ark.
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Unlike yourself, Quickflix has obtained all necessary Australian rights to the content on its platform, faithfully meets all necessary security requirements, including geo-filtering imposed by the content rights holders, and...
Netflix has geo-filtering in place, hence the need for private VPNs. In fact, if the reverse was true and non-Australians watched Quickflix movies through VPNs, I very much doubt that Quickflix could do anything about it.
My guess is that Quickflix is just posturing to get better terms on content licensing. 200,000 is an awful big guess estimate. VPNs are not free (the free ones just aren't reliable). I doubt very much that 200,000 people would put down money for a VPN subscription, on top of a Netflix subs
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If people are getting VPN subscriptions, it's probably for porn, business, and/or free video streaming services like hulu.com or thedarewall.com
Don't forget that they have to get a non-australian credit card as well, in most cases. It's one of Netflix's checks. I agree, I wouldn't be getting a VPN 'merely' for netflix unless 'quickflix' just sucks that horribly(and to be fair, it probably does). It's one of those things where VPN use might be very common in Australia because their internet laws are pretty screwed up.
Oh, and there's another reason for getting a VPN and US credit card - Steam. Australia is one of the more strict nanny-states when
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Quickflix service and selection must really suck for someone to go through the hassle of getting a foreign bank account and vpn to get what is advertised as roughly the same service for about the same price. I have a netflix account their streaming selection isn't that great, I'd like to see more new movies, although I can't complain about the service it has never been down or slow when I wanted to use it.
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If your service is good and it's what people want, you will survive. If it isn't, and people go elsewhere ... too damned bad. If I was dealing with a company, and their competitor made them stop providing me service, there is no way in hell I'd go with the competitor, since they effectively blocked me from getting the service I do want.
True story from small town Colorado: the tiny local cable service wasn't great, somebody with a satellite TV franchise got the bright idea to buy out the cable company and shut it down. And went out of business because no one would sign up for his satellite service after he pulled that stunt. (Didn't help that someone else got a franchise for the *other* satellite service and could market himself as "not the asshole who shut down cable service!)
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Didn't the Australian government sort of recommend users to bypass Geo-IP blocks using VPNs and all that as a way to get cheaper content?
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
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To be fair they might be screwed by an inability to licence stuff. A lot of services outside the US have poor catalogues. Even Netflix can't compete with BitTorrent.
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sure I agree with you.....apart from Netflix is cheating the system by not licensing content for Australia....while still allowing clients to log in from there.
my only real comment is QuickFlix obviously don't understand how vpn's work....no way that Netflix can work out where their users are coming from if they use vpn......
My head hurts after reading your comment. Netflix has effectively done the digital equivalent of setting up a blockade around Australia to prevent their goods from entering the country, and yet they're the ones cheating the system because Australians are managing to smuggle the content through the blockade? What sort of sense does that make?
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Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
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How dare Netflix provide services that the customer wants at a price the can afford!
That people are willing to follow a bunch of hacking methods to get access to a service that they will pay for!
Re:Amusing (Score:5, Funny)
It says a lot about Quickflix that their CEO just told their remaining clients how to go to the competition.
Concentrated stupidity (Score:2)
If stupid was flammable we'd have already seen the flash and soon would come the boom.
Quickflix must be a very poor substitute (Score:2)
I thought they have tried region code for DVD/BD.. (Score:3)
Quickflix? You call that a streaming service? (Score:2, Redundant)
THIS [netflix.com] is a streaming service.
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THIS [netflix.com] is a streaming service.
I see what dun deere.
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And here I was thinking that you were going to link to this.. [netflix.com]
Can return to? (Score:2)
...Quickflix told Netflix to stop this practice, so Australian viewers will be forced to return to Quickflix and other local alternatives.
Fixed that for them.
billing address checks? what checks? (Score:2)
What checks are those? Just the regular payment ones to prevent CC fraud?
As far as I know, Netflix doesn't particularly actively use the billing address to restrict services to a particular region - they use IPs for that. That's why for any country where Netflix launches a service that differs from the U.S. one (fewer titles, episodes released much later, etc.), you'll find tutorials popping up on how to get yourself a VPN service that has U.S. IP addresse
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The content owners don't let Netflix have the same content everywhere. They have to negotiate whole new licenses for each country they want to serve.
They're allowing the VPN users because, to Netflix, it looks like it's coming from a valid IP in the US. That's the whole point of the consumers using the VPN services - to trick the geolocation check that Netflix has.
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That was the whole point of my comment, though - the summary suggested that there's already checks on the billing address, when in fact Netflix doesn't much care where the billing address is - they serve up the content portfolio based on the IP address. If they did use the billing address, then that account could log in from whatever IP address they like, and they'd still get the content licensed for th
Bad government (Score:5, Interesting)
Not bad government, did as ordered (Score:2)
One guess who owns AU foxtel, US fox news and is a big political donor.
Quickflix sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few similar services starting up down here. I had a look at Quickflix because they have a client for my smartTV and TiVo but all they have to offer are old BBC shows which I already own on DVD and their movie selection is woeful even compared with what we can get on AppleTV. Worse, the compression is too high so what they do have looks terrible. If they had the vast array of stuff that Netflix has then they might have a chance but without it they're going nowhere. I don't subscribe to Netflix as I've taken the approach of buying or renting what I want to see but if it was legitimately offered here I would be interested.
Netflix might try..but not to help quickflix. (Score:2)
Netflix could play cat-and-mouse and block known VPN IPs until customers simply give up (and probably torrent the shows they want).
Most Aussies use the same couple of VPN services, they could easily fatigue the vast majority of illegi
Can't compete? (Score:2)
If you can't beat them, outlaw them
There's really not much to see here [quickflix.com.au] if you exclude the "Premium" titles. It's a bit how lefties want to make people use public transportation: not by improving public transportation (increasing quality of life), but by making the car less attractive (decreasing overall quality of life). Quickflix CAN be a one or two bucks per month more expensive... but have 90% of what Netflix US has, and add to that a bunch of quality Aussie content, and they'll blow Netflix out of the w
We can do this the easy way or the hard way (Score:2)
Why would Netflix voluntarily give up its customers to a competitor?
Because it's the easy way, compared to the hard way of QF pressuring the movie studios to withdraw NF's streaming licenses altogether if NF doesn't improve enforcement of territory limits in the existing contracts with the movie studios.
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Sounds like a case of tall poppy envy to me.
Sounds like a badly mixed metaphor to me- tall poppy syndrome [wikipedia.org]- which I assume is what you had in mind- tends to have a more specific use referring to people attacked for their achievements or prominence by their peers within a particular society, and I'm not sure this is a good example of that.
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I think the plant metaphor he was looking for was: "and the Maples formed a union, and demanded equal rights; the Oaks are just too lofty, we will make them give us light". Not a story that ended well.
I'm ashamed to admit it took me 20 years to make the connection between "Maples" and "Canadian band".
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