Netflix aims to unplug border-crossers
TORONTO — Netflix says it hasn’t changed its policy on users who try to access content licensed for streaming in other countries.
The policy is that users shouldn’t be doing it.
It’s widely known that Canadian Netflix users can access TV shows and movies licensed for the American market by using a free or subscriptionbased online service.
The popular tools mask a user’s true location and trick Netflix or other websites into believing the user is actually somewhere else in the world, where different content is available to stream.
A news story on torrentfreak. com suggested that Netflix has begun cracking down on those location-altering services.
Netflix declined an interview request but released a statement saying it hasn’t changed its policies on restricting access to content based on geography.
“Virtually crossing borders to use Netflix is a violation of our terms of use because of content licensing restrictions. We employ industry-standard measures to prevent this kind of use,” the statement said. There hasn’t been any recent change to the Netflix VPN policy or terms of use, it said.
A telephone poll with 2,002 anglophone Canadians commissioned last spring by the Media Technology Monitor found about 32 per cent of the respondents were Netflix subscribers.
About one in three of the Netflix users said they had figured out how to access content meant for U.S. subscribers.
The Media Technology Monitor poll was conducted by Forum Research from March 18 to April 19 of last year. The results are considered accurate within 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.