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How are they going to do this? I mean, anyone could spin up a machine located in the US within a few minutes - how would they know?
by msravi 11y ago
How are they going to do this? I mean, anyone could spin up a machine located in the US within a few minutes - how would they know?
- knotty66 11y agoThey'll block known VPN/Proxy endpoints I guess. I bet spinning up your own proxy/VPN will still work. Although they might block entire networks like EC2 and DigitalOcean too.
- solutionyogi 11y agoExactly. Blocking down known VPN/Proxy endpoints gets them 99% mileage with minimal effort. I don't think they are looking for 100% coverage here.
- CaptSpify 11y agoHonestly, I doubt they even really care. This is probably just to keep from getting screwed over in some licensing deal. "Look, we really tried hard to stop this, I guess those internet-guys are just too good at getting around the system. Oh well."
- amalag 11y agoThe far easier method is with DNS services, I wonder if it will affect those too or this is just an official announcement and they will not do anything drastic.
- lorenzhs 11y agoWell those work by resolving some domains (like netflix.com) to their own tunnel endpoints, which then tunnel to a different country. They can then just block the endpoints' IPs. It's actually not that hard to set up, I did it a couple of years ago to tunnel youtube (which is pretty crippled for music in Germany) and some other services not available outside of the US to a server in the US. The DNS server was in Germany to keep latency low.
- amalag 11y agoYes I see what you mean, they have their own servers to proxy but then are able to hand off the actual video traffic. So presumably Netflix knows which are the Getflix and other service tunnel endpoints. I wonder if it will escalate with Getflix and other providers attempting to bypass such blocks.
- dimillian 11y agoProbably by blocking only most known Ips from most known proxies/vpn first. I think if you're tunnelling from your own server, you'll be fine.
- yid 11y agoMaxmind offers Proxy Detection based on IPs; presumably they have the entire AWS/Google/Azure netblocks listed in there. https://www.maxmind.com/en/proxy-detection-service https://www.maxmind.com/en/proxy-detection-service Still not impossible, just a bit harder when that $5 DO droplet is no longer good enough to proxy Netflix through.
- HeadlessChild 11y agoArgh. I have just that, a $5 DO droplet located in New York (I live in Sweden) that runs a Squid3 web proxy. I use this for Squid3 to not be detected as a proxy: via off forwarded_for off request_header_access Allow allow all request_header_access Authorization allow all request_header_access WWW-Authenticate allow all request_header_access Proxy-Authorization allow all request_header_access Proxy-Authenticate allow all request_header_access Cache-Control allow all request_header_access Content-Encoding allow all request_header_access Content-Length allow all request_header_access Content-Type allow all request_header_access Date allow all request_header_access Expires allow all request_header_access Host allow all request_header_access If-Modified-Since allow all request_header_access Last-Modified allow all request_header_access Location allow all request_header_access Pragma allow all request_header_access Accept allow all request_header_access Accept-Charset allow all request_header_access Accept-Encoding allow all request_header_access Accept-Language allow all request_header_access Content-Language allow all request_header_access Mime-Version allow all request_header_access Retry-After allow all request_header_access Title allow all request_header_access Connection allow all request_header_access Proxy-Connection allow all request_header_access User-Agent allow all request_header_access Cookie allow all request_header_access All deny all
- yid 11y agoIf the entire DO netblock is in the proxy block list, then your headers aren't going to do much.
- dangrossman 11y agoThey don't need to know. They can show you the content that corresponds to the country matching your billing information, regardless of your IP address. It doesn't say they're going to block proxies, only that you won't be able to use proxies to watch content not available in your country.
- JTon 11y agoI don't believe the content distribution rights operate that way. I think what you can see depends on where you are physically located. Not where you are from.
- jmreid 11y agoThe iTunes store currently works based on your billing information.
- jcomis 11y agoSpotify is also based on billing address
- rhino369 11y agoThey could just only play video when the IP address location and billing country match. You wouldn't catch every proxy user, but it would prevent the widespread usage.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoAre accounts transferrable? What if if I travel to the US and use my account there? Would I still be discriminated against, on the basis of my billing country?
- wvenable 11y agoThat would be better; then I could just get a US netflix account using US billing information (easy to get) and then watch all the US content I want.
- vruiz 11y agoIf they are serious, they could tie your account to your country, so when you are in "another country", either virtually or physically, you could only watch things available in both you account's country and your access country.
- zorked 11y ago... and for $40/mo + $5/hour you can watch any movie while traveling with Netflix's special roaming plan!
- perlpimp 11y agoDo whois on ip address, there are addresses that belong to data centers, so between that an manually compiling a list of netmasks belonging to various proxy providers you can get something going. Not without failure I guess.
- JTon 11y agoReuters may be botching up terminology. Perhaps Netflix closing the door on regional workarounds using DNS redirects. Failing that, Netflix may block service to IP subsets owned by popular Proxy services only. If you set up a proxy using your own machine or a smaller service, it may still work.
- logfromblammo 11y agoMore importantly, how are they to know what country lies on the other end of the tunnel, so that they could determine what is not available locally there? I think this is a bit of hand-waving to placate certain rights holders. If subscribers who VPN from the U.S. to the U.S.--perhaps for privacy purposes--are affected, and they make enough noise, Netflix will likely back off to "well, at least we tried" intensity.
- Sephiroth87 11y agoThey don't need to, one of the VPNs i use has been already blocked, I can see the content list just the same, but it just won't play
- logfromblammo 11y agoIf they are not providing you with the service that you have paid them to provide, you should contact customer service and request that the problem be fixed, and that you be refunded for the duration of the failure. IP addresses do not have a fixed physical location or a fixed purpose. They are packet routing instructions, period.
- miander 11y agoThis is a legitimate question that many people reading the comments might be wondering. Why is it being downvoted?
- miander 11y agoThis is a legitimate question that many people reading the comments might be wondering. Why is it being downvoted?
- michaelt 11y agoNetflix doesn't need to block 100% of proxies - they just need blocking that's good enough that people licensing content to them won't sue or withdraw their content. Figuring out the IP addresses used by free and commercial proxies shouldn't be too hard - they just need to create some test accounts, sign up for the proxy services, then check what IP addresses their test accounts appeared to connect from. That'll block anyone who isn't technical enough to set up their own server. If they're feeling enthusiastic enough, they could go further - for example blocking IP ranges used by big hosting providers and seedbox providers; and monitor the main forums and subreddits to learn about any new bypasses they need to clamp down on.
- lukeschlather 11y agoNetflix has its own content is increasingly behaving like a member of the MPAA. (Pushing DRM, blocking proxies, etc.)
- amalag 11y agoI can see someone open sourcing their proxy software which anyone can run on a cloud provider or even spin up on demand.
- wooger 11y agoWhat do you think is running the existing proxy services? There are many open source proxy tools that can do the job fine, not to mention the even simpler openssh or OpenVPN.
- noelsusman 11y agoThat already exists. You could spin up a VPS on any provider and install OpenVPN. If you're technical enough to spin up a VPS then you can get this up and running in 5 minutes.
- aianus 11y agohttps://hub.docker.com/r/kylemanna/openvpn/ https://hub.docker.com/r/kylemanna/openvpn/ Knock yourself out :)
- xur17 11y agoI'm guessing they are going to use a service that provides a list of proxy ips, and block those. It won't be complete, but it will cover the vast majority. Someone should build a p2p proxy system specifically for Netflix. It would be pretty hard to block, and the risk for hosts would be low if it was limited to netflix ips only.
- rsync 11y ago"How are they going to do this? I mean, anyone could spin up a machine located in the US within a few minutes - how would they know?" They can't. They can identify commercial proxy providers and the IP blocks they utilize and block them. Maybe they can auto-identify subnets based on their ARIN registration text ... it's still just a wack-a-mole process. If you own your own IP space in the US that you use for your own purposes, it will presumably work forever. Or, put another way, if you are truly a peer on the Internet, you can continue to do the things it was meant for. If not, you're just a media consumer.
- cmdrfred 11y agoDigitalocean + openVPN = $5/month Netflix proxy. If they discover the IP address, shut it down and spin up another VM.
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoIf I was a tech at Netflix tasked with blocking proxies, the entire set of Digital Ocean IP blocks would rank very high on the list of suspects.
- bluedino 11y agoSites such as Walmart already block my access when using my server at LARGE_VPS_PROVIDER