We all love Netflix but Netflix here in the United States is different from Netflix in Australia and Netflix in Sweden. The reason for this is that Netflix has different deals to distribute content in different countries, which means movies and shows that might be available in the U.S. aren’t necessarily available in other countries. However, Overclock3d.net has flagged some recent comments made by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings that suggest Netflix has a plan to fix this issue for good.
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“The basic solution is for Netflix to get global and have its content be the same all around the world so there’s no incentive to [use a VPN to circumvent international restrictions],” Hastings said. “Then we can work on the more important part which is piracy. The key thing about piracy is that some fraction of it is because [users] couldn’t get the content. That part we can fix. Some part of piracy however is because they just don’t want to pay. That’s a harder part. As an industry, we need to fix global content.”
The trouble is that Netflix will have to get content providers on board with this plan, of course. We personally have no idea what the rhyme or reason is behind studios’ decisions to withhold shows and movies from certain markets while allowing them to be shown in others, but it’s so easy to circumvent these restrictions using VPNs that we can’t imagine them holding up for much longer.
