You might remember, that few days ago we have reported about Netflix action against VPN and Smart DNS providers. As we understand some of you may have felt a bit uneasy. For us it was always very questionable as there is few important points to the story. Today, additional evidence we can confirm two things – so don’t worry. No harm will happen to you and you Netflix access!
Is watching Netflix from outside US legal?
This is perhaps the most important question and simple and short answer is yes. However, as you might remember from the time you have registered your account with Netflix, you are in breach of its official policy. The worst that can happen? Your account will be shut. So far, for many years we have not heard about single accident of this type. Let’s face it – where would Netflix benefit from you not paying anymore?
It is (for years now) official secret, that with fast USA VPN or with SmartDNS proxy unblock people not living in US are able to mask IP address with US IP or use Smart DNS and unblock access to this “Holy Grail” of VOD. And of course since Netflix life depends on content it has from copyright owners it has to comply with rules and agreements signed.
As such its official policy states that you are not allowed to do what you do and if VPN or proxy will be detected such access will be shut down (not your account!).This makes movie studios happy or at least they can not complain too much as officially Netflix is not opening their access to markets where it is not officially available and (as you know from our SmartDNS US / UK switch) its content (libraries) differs in different regions.
But there is another side to the story. Since you all pay for the service Netflix is not and will not be in active search for users, VPN’s and proxy servers. You are all part of an important revenue for the company and source free advertising for them on markets that they might try to conquer one day. Our suspicions were confirmed by an article at Guardian. Let us quote few important parts:
“More than 30 million Netflix users live in countries where the service is unavailable without the use of location-masking software, giving the company a hefty financial incentive not to crack down on members who use the technological loophole to watch content not authorised for their country.
[…]
“The claims that we have changed our policy on VPN are false,” said Neil Hunt (chief product officer at Netflix). “People who are using a VPN to access our service from outside of the area will find that it still works exactly as it has always done.””
You can read later statement as: If we are forced by content owners we might close down access form VPN server form time to time, but we will not try to loose you as our customers.
This means that both VPN and Smart DNS access to unblocked US & UK Netflix will remain open.