Streaming service Netflix continues to go from strength to strength, adding 5.6 million subscribers globally during the December quarter, beating analyst expectations and taking its total subscriber base to 75 million, according to The AFR. Netflix was also the best performed stock in the US last year, rising in value by 134%.
Meanwhile, in Australia, a new survey by Roy Morgan Research has revealed that Netflix has grown its subscriber base to more than 1 million households; although the rate of growth does appear to be slowing (see next chart).
The rise of Netflix has driven a rear-guard action from its competitors and content licence holders, who are now lobbying the company to prevent international subscribers from accessing its comprehensive US catalogue via a virtual private network (VPN) or DNS proxy.
In a 14 January blog post, Netflix’s Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture, David Fullagar, announced that the company would take measures to “respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location”, specifically by preventing those using proxies and unblockers to access content outside of their country of location.
However, whether Netflix will be successful is debatable, with companies offering services to circumvent geoblocking declaring that they would work around any measure.
For example, popular unblocking service, Unblock-us.com, has stated:
“We are aware of the announcement and should our service be affected at any time, we will make adjustments,” the spokesperson told The Australian. “Presently, there is nothing to be concerned about as everything is working properly.”
The spokesperson said it was the company’s mission to provide its customers with open and free access to content from anywhere around the world.
In a similar vein, popular VPN provider, TorGuard, has declared:
“For those of you who rely on TorGuard VPN service to unblock Netflix content unrestricted, you don’t have to worry. Netflix will be pushing this plan forward soon, and when that happens, TorGuard will immediately deploy new server IP addresses so users can still bypass blocks.”
The reality is that if Netflix goes too hard, and is actually successful in blocking access to the US catalogue, then it risks losing a substantial number of its international subscribers.
More likely, Netflix is talking tough – in a bid to appease the content licence holders – but will not follow through with its threat for the fear of losing revenue.
