Geolocked Content no longer supported.
PIA recently released a new policy about geo-locked content. It can be found here. For those who aren't really inclined to read the link it just means that you can't use the VPN to access netflix. Or anything else that could be considered violating a geolock.
The way I read the policy that would also include geolocks which prevent people from accessing sites outside of their country. Of course I am thinking of places like China, UAE, and other such instances.
After speaking with chat support I was instructed that this only applied to copyright as per US law. It is my understanding that the law applicable is the law where the person is resident. This would leave open the possibility of being unable to use the VPN to access perfectly lawful content in your own country if that content is protected by copyright in another country (goodby fair use doctrine).
Also, the post makes references to "international laws," which they are abiding by. International laws generally don't apply to private actors like companies and really only to states.
My reading of the situation is that PIA is using fictional laws in attempt to propagate a distinctly American notion of copyrights. Which is largely out of step with the rest of Western democracies. Their net also is much wider than they intimated to me via chat.
I find this distincly disappointing.
I find this distincly disappointing.
Comments
PIA is a US company so it makes sense they would be sensitive to US legal issues, even when there is no specific clear law they might still open themselves up to being sued if someone else feels they are violating or facilitating the violation of their rights.
If Netflix, BBC, etc. didn't start blocking VPN services you wouldn't even notice this policy change.
Only today did PIA remove that language from their homepage (gosh, that sure took a long time).
If a PIA customer never really needed vpn in the first place, and they only needed geoblock circumvention, smart dns will do the job much better for them, especially since smart dns companies appear committed to stay in the whack-a-mole game for the long haul. PIA customers who needed that should have been steered toward smart dns providers in the first place. Instead, many of them just wasted their money and won't be refunded for PIA's broken promises.
As to TorGuard's involvement re: smart dns, you're correct. They happen to be one of the smart dns providers I eluded to who's actively engaged in developing and rolling out advanced technology to stay a few steps ahead of Netflix, and other geoblockers. You're also correct about the issue of dedicated IP. That's specifically what TorGuard recommends, at least at this point in time, and until they've fully retooled their smart dns. A dedicated IP makes it almost impossible to be blocked. Needless to say there's added expense for it. TorGuard happens to be running a lifetime 50% off deal at this time, bringing the cost down to around $4/mo. So if someone needs both vpn and geoblock circumvention it's probably the ideal way to go. If someone doesn't need vpn they can just go with a smart dns service and save the money.
If PIA offered a dedicated ip at a reasonable fee then that would fit the bill for at least some here who are frustrated over geolocking. But PIA doesn't offer it anyway. However, even if they did I'd still have to speak against specifically recommending PIA as they clearly wouldn't support it for those purposes. Companies like TorGuard will.
Is it their prerogative to do so? Yes, but it doesn't speak well of their business ethics to pull out while also refusing a refund to those who purchased their service to "Unblock censorship filters" and "Enjoy unrestricted access." Their cover story for doing so is over "legalities." Yet they knew and understood the legal issues all along, and Netflix's geolocking policy doesn't change that. This sort of flip floppery I find very disconcerting.
We're still waiting, PIA, for that promised public statement.
They promised a certain service and then without much notice suddenly pulled the rug from under people who were hoping to use that service. I think it would be in PIA's best interest to promise better notification and maybe even at least partial refunds if they ever do something like this again in the future.
It may seem silly if not hypocritical to worry about ethics here, and maybe it is, but I think people would worry far less about giving them their money if they had some sort of reassurances about sudden/major changes in policy like this. It's not a demand, it's a suggestion, and they can (and will) do with it as they see fit.
My job involves international travel. I don't want to access geolocked content to which I'm not entitled (I live in the UK), I just want to be able to access abroad what I can access at home. I used to use PIA with a UK IP address, and I was a bit peeved that Netlfix required me to do that instead of relying on a username/password. And now it won't even let me do that. I am seriously thinking about cancelling my Neflix account.
Ironically all that will come of this is escalate the amount of file sharing, especially from places like KAT and TPB, both of which have just about everything you could find on Netflix US, and much more. Both sites also recently embedded Torrents-Time making it especially easy to "stream" movies ala Popcorn Time (however, I strongly urge people not to install Torrents Time -- it's a potential security disaster as Andrew Sampson has explained, and the majority of Popcorn Time forks are now also riddled with malware).
Content producers lie with their "education programs" trying to convince us that everything we want is available "legally." No, it is not, not even a tiny fraction of it, and there is no stronger evidence of that than the pressure they put on a company like Netflix to deliberately restrict content access to paying subscribers. In my view the primary reason online piracy is rampant is not because most people want it all for free, but because content producers and distributors continue maintaining a stranglehold on content access with their 20th century business model. People outside the US assume it only affects them, but the reality is it affects us too, and in incredibly annoying ways.
Here's a classic example: Just last night I turned on Netflix to continue watching the 4th in a 10 part series, History Channel's "How The States Got Their Shapes." But as I have had happen to me many times before, it's no longer there anymore! Not by Netlix's choice, mind you. It's all thanks to an antiquated and insane decades old distribution system called "windowing."
I will continue watching the series because I learned a great deal from it. It just won't be on Netflix since they're not permitted to carry it anymore. It also won't be directly from History Channel since I don't have cable TV (I "cut the cord" years ago), and even if I did I wouldn't wait another year or two for them to run the series again. I've gotten too used to watching things instantly, such as Netflix gives me; but if I can't get it on Netflix it's still almost always available from other sources. Does that make me a "pirate"? I think not; and I certainly don't have any trouble sleeping at night about it.
I agre 100%.