Fight for your right to bust geoblocks

Even the Australian Government has supported the consumer when it comes to video-streaming parties. APC’s editor Dan Gardiner explains.

The continuing digital revolution has helped to break down many borders, reshaping the way business is done and upsetting old regional trade arrangements.

We think most people would agree that trying to artificially restrict markets is bad for both businesses and consumers. But it actually happens all the time — and Aussies are often at the rough end of the stick when it comes to pricing for digital goods and services.

Take Netflix, for example. The service which calls the US home has almost 6,000 titles (combining movies and TV shows) on offer in the States. In Australia, that number is around 2,000. While some territories do have it worse (Hong Kong and Taiwan only have about 520 a pop), Australia is towards the bottom end of the curve — Mexico has more, at about 3,000 titles.

Of course, for those in the know, getting around the so-called geoblocks that prevent you from watching another locale’s library is child’s play. While there aren’t any Australian laws specifically protecting the circumvention of geolocation blocks, there aren’t any that prohibit it either. And in fact, two separate government reports have come down on the side of the Australians in cases involving the pricing and availability of digital goods and services. The first of those was released in July 2013 and stated quite plainly that “in many cases, the price differences for IT products cannot be explained by the cost of doing business in Australia”.

At the end of April, a new report put out by the Productivity Commission reiterated that report’s findings, stating: “The Australian Government should implement the recommendation ... to amend the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) to make clear that it is not an infringement for consumers to circumvent geoblocking technology. The Australian Government should seek to avoid any international agreements that would prevent or ban consumers from circumventing geoblocking technology.”

At present there’s nothing specifically enshrining those rights in Australian law — thus, we’ve got no legal recourse should a company put those blocks in place. And the bigger names are certainly trying: Netflix’s current crackdown on VPN and smart DNS services is an ongoing effort. As such, when choosing a VPN or smart DNS like those we’ve reviewed in this month’s superguide, we’d recommend not overcommitting when it comes to subscribing.