Looking for Law and Order? Seeking more Star Trek? Missing Mad Men? If you’re among the estimated 1.92 million Canadians who may be illegally streaming TV shows meant solely for the U.S. Netflix market, then Netflix has recently issued statements upholding its long-standing policies that users should not try to access content licensed for streaming in other countries.
Well, based on a new report, it is suggested that one in three Anglophone Canadian Netflix users have decided to use additional technology to trick Netflix so as to be able to watch US-only content. Because there is such a discrepancy between the content available in the US catalogue compared to the Canadian Netflix catalogue, it seems as if many people in Canada are sidestepping the rules by changing their Canadian IP address to avail of US-only Netflix content. Not only that, many people are also using these same techniques to access the highly popular US-only Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime video libraries as well.
The Internet, being ubiquitous as it is, has many ways , both paid and free to mask a users identity and change their countries IP address making it look like they reside from elsewhere.
Netflix, which is now operating in more than 40 countries, offers different content in each local market, depending on licensing agreements signed for by that nation. And as part of that previous report I mentioned, it is estimated that as many as 35% of Canadians are jumping the digital boarder to watch US-only content.
While Netflix has never officially given their stance on Canadian subscribers bypassing regional content restrictions, if you go to: https://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse you can see it’s a clear violation of the their terms of use.
So, what is an IP address you say? Well, an IP address is a unique numeric identifier that each computer has when they connect to the Internet. Much like a telephone number. And when you visit websites, they can tell, based on this number, what country, city or town you are from and adjust their content accordingly. Now, in some circumstances, much like in our talk last week on keeping safe on hotel Wi-Fi masking your identity can keep you safe but if you’re concealing your location for something relatively innocuous (like streaming a TV show), there’s a chance that simply concealing your location could be interpreted as suspicious.
At this point in time, it’s very difficult to point to a statute that talks about using IP masking or geolocation avoidance services. At this point, there doesn’t appear to be any clear law against it, at least not in Canada. But again, if you do use a service that masks your IP, you might want to check the contractual restrictions in the terms of use of some of the services you are using like Netflix.
I wonder though if it’s wise to pretend your computer is located outside of Canada, given how much we’ve learned over the past year about U.S. Government surveillance programs. We already know that Canadians who use American web services run the risk of being caught up in these programs, and we know that the NSA is specifically interested in foreign threats.
Be that as it may, I don’t think that the security services are going to be looking for people trying to conceal themselves so as to watch American TV shows, movies, or music as I’m sure they’ve got a bigger fish to fry. Not that I’m tempted when I go to a site that states “The requested video cannot be displayed in your region” to quickly bypass that restriction.
Ultimately though, I think I’d rather waiting until the service officially becomes available in your area is a good and safe practice as you will always run the potential risk of attracting attention if you seek to try to obscure your identity all the time.
