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In an announcement at the end of February 2016, Netflix stressed that it would begin to deny users who are using VPN access to the content of their service such a practice. More precisely, users in different regions and countries, especially in Europe, don’t have access to the same content as users in the United States or neighboring regions/countries. That’s why this part of Netflix’s audience uses VPN access to the service whose settings allow them to log in as users from another country and unlock content that isn’t initially available in their area. Doing so, they violate Netflix’s Terms of Use and because of that, but also because of copyright reasons, Netflix terminates those users to access restricted content. Prior to this announcement, Netflix, its partners, and users had a “tacit agreement” regarding the use of VPN capabilities because not all content is available worldwide. Until recently, the same case was regarding this service in general. Unfortunately for users, this “tacit agreement” has changed, which has been followed by online petitions, negative comments, and resentment from subscribers around the world. Users Raised a Lot of Noise Against Blocking of VPNs Users who have been blocked from accessing Netflix via VPN have raised a lot of noise on social media, especially on Twitter and Facebook, threatening that they will cancel their subscriptions if their access to content continues to be blocked. As they explained, they are annoyed by Netflix’s policy of not showing them what content they want to watch, with some saying that as much as 90 percent of everything they watch belongs to inaccessible content that’s locally blocked. Let’s clarify – these are users that are legally logged in, who each month give Netflix between $ 8.99 and $ 15.99 to subscribe, but “cheat” the system a little using a VPN to unlock content they can’t see in their region/country. The account of these users isn’t terminated, they are only forbidden from their previous VPN access. First countries whose users felt this new Netflix’s policy on their skin were Australia, followed by Germany, and so on. Those who try to trick Netflix’s geo-blocking using VPN will see the following error message clearly saying they won’tbe able to watch anything until they turn off their VPN: “Whoops, something went wrong… Streaming error. You seem to be using an unblocker or proxy. Please turn off any of these services and try again.” What Made Netflix Sharpen Its Streaming Policy? Never has this US company and its partners been happy with VPN solutions, regardless of the fact that users were paying for the service. However, partners still have to pay a certain amount of money to be available in some countries and have benefited from it, just like Netflix, which means that they lose some of their revenue if someone from Germany “pretends” to be in the United States and thus, consumes content inaccessible in Germany. Understandably, all three sides to this storyhave valid arguments. Specifically, Netflix can’t display content in a country that’s not licensed to do so, meaning that the content owners don’t receive some of the money they would receive in the case of licenses. Also, users are angry because they pay the same amount of money as American subscribers but don’t have the ability to view content that exists in the United States. Of course, they think something like that is unfair. We can explain this issue from a different angle. The cause of the problem is that Netflix has a different range in every country. Before it allows you to stream content, the licensed rights for it must be purchased. However, these must be purchased individually for each country. For example, Netflix has the American licensed rights for some movies and series but, let’s say, France doesn’t have the rights. American users can see the content, French users can’t. Geo-blocking is intended to prevent viewers from playing movies and series that they shouldn’t be able to play. If you log in to Netflix, your IP address will be used to identify which country you’re in. Then, accordingly, you’ll be shown the range for this country. So it’s often not possible to see a certain range from a certain country in another country without an aid, such as a VPN. What VPN does is helping you connect to different servers – including ones from the USA. This server is then virtually switched between you and Netflix who will only see that you’ve connected to the Internet via an American server. As a result, it assumes that you’re in the United States and that you can access the American range. So, a VPN is a good and legal way to see the US content. Is Netflix Acting Against Itself? Let’s get back to talking about unsatisfied users. In addition to all written above, criticism has also risen about the lack of subtitles in native languages for those who have a Netflix service in their home country. So, they are misled about that even though they pay for the service just like the Americans. All in all, it’s a very complicated and unwanted episode for Netflix because two months before they started blockingVPNs, they became available in 190 countries and began bragging about managing to handle the issue of piracy. And then this, what we’re talking about in the article, happened… Indeed, Netflix offers a lot of older movies, which those more versed in movies and series have watched through “alternative ways” a long time ago, especially in countries where piracy isn’t punishable or laws regarding this matter are loose, and after a month of the trial period, they simply gave up on renewing their subscriptions. Not only that, but subtitles into the languages of these countries (mainly third world countries) are practically inaccessible and the older population isn’t interested in the service because these countries have a lower percentage of English speakers. It may take some time for Netflix to re-organize, but until that happens, it will lose more than it will get with the decision to block the VPN possibility.

Piracy continues to be a major challenge for media and broadcast organisations, with the shift to IP presenting new opportunities for pirates. How can the industry safeguard content distribution in an OTT world? Streaming piracy: Webinar discusses the problems still facing online content With more media companies shifting to OTT and IP-led services, the piracy landscape is changing. Valuable content rights drive direct-to-consumer platforms making it more essential than ever to protect content from illegal use and avoid revenue loss. That means content owners are in a constant battle, to protect their content on its journey into the homes of legitimate customers without degrading the levels of service. In the latest IBC365 webinar, experts on battling piracy discuss how to safeguard content as more of it moves towards OTT. This is a particular issue in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. According to figures from Sandvine, 23% of internet users across MENA and Turkey have subscribed to a pirate IPTV service. This compares with 5.8% in Europe and 6.9% in the US. BeIN Media Group legal director for anti-piracy Cameron Andrews outlined streaming piracy as any restreaming of content over the internet illegally. This may be legitimately obtained – for example through a legitimate subscription – but then shared across other platforms illegitimately. Or it could be as simple as recording a legitimate stream using a smartphone and sharing through social media. “We think of piracy as an ecosystem because there a lot of different players involved,” explains Andrews, who points to hardware manufacturers, app developers, the pirates themselves and wholesalers and resellers who can all be involved in piracy. He identifies four options to tackle piracy but says all have significant flaws as well. These are: Sending takedown notices to third parties in that ecosystem who are facilitating piracy; Use fingerprinting/ watermarking to discover and kill subscriptions used by pirates for re-streams; Investigate and take legal action against pirates; Work with ISPs to block customers from accessing pirated services. “You will always have piracy to some extent,” he adds. “But it is about containing it. It’s about making the pirated product less attractive to the consumer than the legitimate product. “Through pursuing each of these elements, plus cooperation effort in the background and better laws, we can go a long way to containing piracy. But we shouldn’t underestimate just how difficult it is to lock up content so it can’t be pirated. Read more: Piracy: How broadcasters are confronting the threat Joining Andrews on the webinar is Sheila Cassells, EVP at the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA). AAPA brings together more than 30 different players across the entire content change to try and tackle piracy. Illegal streaming has seen a significant drop in the cost of entry for pirates, according to Cassells, meaning you only need access to a legitimate stream and the right tools in order to become a pirate. “It’s almost becoming out of control,” she explains. “It’s not a case of winning the battle – I don’t think we’ll ever win it outright. It is a case of containing it, mitigating it, and working together to minimise the damage being caused. “It’s also important to work alongside law enforcement to ensure they have the correct knowledge to fight it when they want to go down that route and work with the other players who facilitate piracy, knowingly or unknowingly, to reduce it.” Asked if consumers are knowingly paying for pirated services, Cassells says that a lot of pirated offerings have a significant number of channels compared with legitimate services making it obvious that it is “a bit dodgy”. “There is a large element of consumers who are buying pirated services knowingly and for many, the fear of penalty for doing so isn’t great,” she adds. “Some countries will take legal action against the end user but in many the impact on the end user is just that the pirated service is stopped or they lose some subscriptions, but then are free to find another pirated service.” She challenged the private sector to work together to tackle piracy and “take coordinated action where required”. Read more: Online piracy: OTTs battling back Also on the webinar is Daniel Woolnough, director at Content Protection Experts, an organisation that aims to tackle piracy. “Technology is not the entire solution,” he explains. It is vital for content owners to develop a strategy going across the entire space. “Point solutions are not necessarily the answer to this as they have small impacts. “Developing a plan, making sure that plan is realistic, and the goals are measurable is critical because generally, an anti-piracy campaign will cost money so quantifiable results are key.” Senior level buy-in is also important. Having senior backing for an anti-piracy plan helps to overcome resource issues that are commonplace. Giving their biggest tips for tackling piracy, Cassells says companies need to give resource and priority to anti-piracy and work closely with technology partners and other partners to dampen piracy as much as possible. Woolnough agrees that cooperation is vital. He says that challenging suppliers and technology partners over the capabilities of an anti-piracy solution is important too. For Andrews, it is a cross-business issue. “It impacts all different parts of the business, from the valuation, through to how you build your platform, and how you structure your offering.”

The president of the Spanish league wants the Premier League to consider the "damage" that Saudi Arabia's pirating of broadcasts has caused the sport before it decides whether to approve a takeover of Newcastle by the country's sovereign wealth fund. The Saudis are trying to buy an English topflight club while "stealing football" through the beoutQ service that is undermining the sport's finances, La Liga President Javier Tebas told The Associated Press. The Premier League has been part of a joint push by global soccer competitions, including La Liga, in trying to shut down beoutQ's pirated broadcasts of games. They both lodged protests with the American government which led last month to Saudi Arabia remaining on a "Priority Watch List" as one of the "notorious markets for counterfeiting and piracy." Human rights activists have also put pressure on the Premier League to consider stopping the Saudi sovereign wealth fund becoming the majority owner of Newcastle. The Premier League has not commented on the progress of the process for approving the takeover even as objections to the deal have grown. "European football rights – including Newcastle rights – have been stolen systematically by BeoutQ for three years," Tebas said in a statement to the AP. "Now the Saudis want a seat at the top table — forgetting the damage they have done through BeoutQ. If football leagues and clubs do not protect their intellectual property, they have nothing. LaLiga couldn't be clearer about this — stealing the football broadcast is stealing football." The bootlegging of sports broadcasts is a proxy in a wider Gulf diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar, which owns Premier League and La Liga rights through the beIN Sports network that is banned from operating in Saudi Arabia. La Liga and the Premier League wrote separately to the Office of the United States Trade Representative in February to highlight the lack of legal action taken by Saudi Arabia over beoutQ despite complaints. The Premier League's current television contracts are worth 9.2 billion pounds ($11.4 billion) over three seasons. "The scale and nature of online piracy, such as that committed in Saudi Arabia ... continues to place this revenue at significant risk," the Premier League wrote to the U.S. government body. The Saudi Public Investment Fund is pursuing an 80% stake in Newcastle in a 300 million pound ($370 million) takeover alongside the wealthy British-based Reuben brothers and financier Amanda Staveley, buying out retail entrepreneur Mike Ashley. A letter was sent to Premier League clubs last month by beIN Media Group CEO Yousef Al-Obaidly warning of the "danger of allowing the acquisition" given Saudi Arabia's "illegal actions and their direct impact upon the commercial interests of the Premier League." Amnesty International has also asked the league to consider blocking the bid because the fund is overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying he has been involved in a "sweeping crackdown on human rights." Agnes Callamard, a U.N. special rapporteur who authored an inquiry into the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, said there was "sufficient credible evidence regarding the responsibility of the crown prince demanding further investigation" and required sanctions. Tebas has also previously denounced Saudi Arabia over human rights by highlighting its role in the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. "The Saudi Arabian government has a policy whereby they improve the image of the government through sport — whitewashing their image," Tebas said during a visit to London in January. "We should not forget what happened in the Turkish embassy. "We should not forget these things. This happened in an embassy, not a pub and this is very serious, at least in my opinion. Money is not the only thing that matters."

Saudi Arabia has been placed on a "Priority Watch List" for the second year running, in a report published by the United States, mostly due to extensive piracy carried out through its beoutQ channel system in the kingdom. The report, published on Thursday by the US Trade Representative (USTR), identifies Saudi Arabia as one of only 10 countries that fail to protect and enforce intellectual property (IP) around the world. Other countries include China, India and Indonesia. More: Asian Football Confederation steps up fight against beoutQ piracy Video reveals location of beoutQ piracy channel HQ in Riyadh Qatar's beIN seeks $1bn compensation for 'Saudi TV sport piracy' The USTR has also ordered an "Out-of-Cycle Review" into Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The review is a USTR tool which allows the government to increase its efforts to try and solve the identified IP issues. "The United States continues to remain concerned about reportedly high levels of online piracy in Saudi Arabia, particularly through illicit streaming devices [ISDs], which right holders report are widely available and generally unregulated in Saudi Arabia," the report said. "The United States encourages Saudi Arabia to increase IP enforcement actions and IP awareness campaigns particularly targeted at reducing online piracy and to combat the perception spurred by beoutQ's activity that pirating copyrighted material is permissible." Qatar-based sport network beIN Media Group, which holds exclusive rights to broadcast international tournaments to the MENA region, has long claimed beoutQ is stealing its signal and broadcasting it as its own. Last year, FIFA, football's world governing body, said it will take legal action against beoutQ for illegally broadcasting World Cup matches in the Middle East. The US government report follows only a few months after the European Commission also published a significant report in which it singled out Saudi Arabia for "causing considerable harm to EU businesses" following the unprecedented theft of European sport programmes by Saudi-based beoutQ and Arabsat1.

Music piracy seems largely to have dropped in the wake of growing streaming service presences from Spotify, Apple Music and others but amid the coronavirus pandemic, numbers are falling even more while showing an interesting trend towards the past. According to a report from Rolling Stone, global media piracy analytics company Muso revealed their data and after requesting music-based information the publication is noticing people who are stealing music are returning to peer-to-peer torrent sites. In the report, they’re noting that movie piracy has shot up by 41 percent in the US by the final week of March compared to the previous month. Rolling Stone requested the equivalent data from Muso for the music side of things and the numbers aren’t nearly the same but do show interesting trends. They note that cloud-based streaming piracy has been the fastest growing form in the music industry over the past several years. In 2017, illegal streaming sites made up over 41 percent of all music piracy visits. Now, during the pandemic music piracy has actually dropped. In the final week of March, piracy numbers lowered worldwide compared to February. Numbers were down 11.84 percent in Europe, 19.72 percent in Japan, and down 5.84 percent in the UK and 1.01 percent in the US. Streaming stats dropped even for legitimate uses in the beginning stages of lockdowns too though. Last week, Spotify noted to investors that “in hard-hit markets like Italy and Spain, we saw a notable decline in Daily Active Users and consumption,” and further said “over the last few weeks, we’ve seen listening start to rebound, and in many markets, consumption has meaningfully recovered.” Muso’s data reflects the same changes with piracy in Spain falling 4.89 percent in March. Most interestingly though, music-related visits to torrenting platforms like the Pirate Bay are shooting up. US torrenting site visits increased by 15.62 percent with 1.308 million visits for the last week of February compared to 1.513 million in March. Worldwide this is happening too. India saw a 23.43 percent increase and the UK went up 18.53 percent. Canada increased by 17.54 percent and across the EU, 7.61 percent. Spain saw the largest increase at 26.40 percent. Muso CEO Andy Chatterley says he believes ownership of music might be related to the numbers. “One stat that anecdotally jumps out is that Germany bucks the global trend, with visits to torrenting sites for music down 6.09% in the last week of March,” says Chatterley. “It’s interesting for context to think that Germany was quite late to switch away from physical music and to embrace streaming,” adds Chatterley. “It also makes you wonder if people are craving ownership more than usual right now, and whether that’s been caused or amplified by COVID-19, which may be having an effect on people’s financial status. The lockdown could also potentially be affecting subscription fatigue.”

With a large part of the planet on lockdown in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, streaming video consumption has seen explosive growth. Streaming platform Mux this week issued a study stating that during one three-week period measured by the company, streaming video usage overall jumped 239%. UK piracy tracking firm Muso TNT says they've also seen "unprecedented" traffic to movie streaming websites around the world in the last few months. The firm found that in many countries, the kind of piracy traffic traditionally reserved for weekends is now the norm during most weeks: "Data provided to Motherboard by London-based Muso TNT show that between February 20 and March 20, visits to pirated movie websites by users in both the U.S. and UK jumped 31 percent. The data shows similar growth in Spain (35 percent), Portugal (37 percent), India (33 percent), and Germany (30 percent), with Italy the highest overall at 50 percent." In just one month in the U.S. alone, the firm tracked 137 million page views to more than 19,000 websites offering streaming and BitTorrent access to pirated films, and more than 601 million page views of sites offering access to pirated TV content. The company says its data originates from an “industry-leading website traffic data provider.” None of this should be particularly surprising given that pirates are some of the heaviest consumers and buyers of movies, films, and television content. But it's worth noting that piracy, and BitTorrent use in general, had already been seeing a bounce even before the pandemic started. Why? While streaming is certainly cheaper with better customer service than traditional cable TV options, the rise of a universe of exclusivity silos has started to confuse and annoy some customers. With every broadcaster and their uncle now flooding the sector, hunting and pecking between a laundry list of exclusives and ever-shifting licensing agreements has become frustrating (aka "subscription fatigue"), driving some of these users back to the simplicity of piracy. "Piracy is a level playing field,” Muso wrote in one recent white paper. “No walled data-garden, no exclusivity, no windowing and no theatrical release. It’s all there: consumption with no barriers." Sure, this "subscription fatigue" is a minority of subscribers and not the end of the world, given streaming revenues are exploding. But pandemic or no, there's still some familiar lessons here about viewing piracy as a competitor or as a useful gauge of customer dissatisfaction. And based on the kind of price hikes we're still seeing at major cable TV providers, these remain challenging ideas for many traditional cable and broadcast execs to wrap their heads around. Muso found that while visits to illegal movie streaming websites have surged, visits to pirated TV stream outfits hasn't seen the same level of growth, in large part due to the suspension of most sports leagues. With sports, one of the few things that keeps people subscribing to traditional pay TV, several studies on cord cutters have shown that the cord cutting trend is likely to accelerate -- with bloated TV bundles a likely early casualty as a growing number of folks experience financial hardwhip: "Considering the financial crisis element of the pandemic, something has to give for the consumer,” Chatterley said. “If they discover piracy now the question is do they go back to multiple subscriptions?" So while many things have certainly changed, the same core issues still apply. Companies still need to compete with the simplicity and affordability of piracy if they want to hinder its growth. That's particularly true of the traditional cable sector, which, for the better part of the last decade, has treated competing on price as a some kind of deadly contagion in its own right. Just because an entertainment industry executive doesn't think its fair that they have to compete with privacy has never mattered -- and still doesn't.