<story><title>After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy</title><url>http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-piracy-content-vpn-1.3548476</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>planetjones</author><text>I am an English person living in Switzerland.  Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.).&lt;p&gt;Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us.  The clampdown by Netflix has been &amp;quot;successful&amp;quot; and I now can&amp;#x27;t access Netflix USA using unblock-us.&lt;p&gt;This happened halfway through watching House of Cards.  So my choice was either stop watching or download the remaining episodes...&lt;p&gt;I am tired of companies talking about borderless trade, global economy, etc.  when the distribution of movies and tv shows is stuck in the sad world of geo-restrictions.  I also legally get access to UK TV channels through my cable subscription, but I don&amp;#x27;t get access to iPlayer as that&amp;#x27;s only for UK residents... so again the only option to catch-up on TV that I forgot to record, is to use an unblocker.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WA</author><text>This time, I wanted to watch Game of Thrones legally – from Germany. The rights are with Sky Online, a 10 bucks a month subscription service. Sounds good in theory. I signed up and then:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - I had to wait 25 minutes for the activation email
    - I activated my account, but it wouldn’t let me access my account settings for another 25 minutes
    - then I had to install Silverlight (I’m on OS X)
    - then I tried to start the stream, which resulted in an OS freeze and something like the OS X blue screen, which I have never seen ever before
    - then I rebooted and tried again, which failed with the *authentication* step
    - the web inspector showed a bunch of JS and&amp;#x2F;or Silverlight errors
    - I gave up and installed Silverlight on my wife’s Win 10 machine
    - the stream would load, but it has hard-coded German subtitles for signs and Dothraki scenes, which is annoying.
    - it has no optional English subtitles
    - it is only HD, not Full HD
    - stream was kind of laggy
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So, now compare this to the pirated process:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - downloads very fast
    - usually there are subtitles
    - superb quality
    - I can watch whenever I want with the player I want
    - no browser plugins, no errors, no nothing.
    - it just works&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy</title><url>http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-piracy-content-vpn-1.3548476</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>planetjones</author><text>I am an English person living in Switzerland.  Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.).&lt;p&gt;Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us.  The clampdown by Netflix has been &amp;quot;successful&amp;quot; and I now can&amp;#x27;t access Netflix USA using unblock-us.&lt;p&gt;This happened halfway through watching House of Cards.  So my choice was either stop watching or download the remaining episodes...&lt;p&gt;I am tired of companies talking about borderless trade, global economy, etc.  when the distribution of movies and tv shows is stuck in the sad world of geo-restrictions.  I also legally get access to UK TV channels through my cable subscription, but I don&amp;#x27;t get access to iPlayer as that&amp;#x27;s only for UK residents... so again the only option to catch-up on TV that I forgot to record, is to use an unblocker.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kennywinker</author><text>This blows my mind. How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their &lt;i&gt;own&lt;/i&gt; show in Switzerland? I understand their hands are sometimes tied in getting content from the studios, but they own House of Cards... I&amp;#x27;m so confused how they could end up in that situation...</text></comment>