request for pia responce
now that netflix and other services are blocking your ip's 100% (just confirmed this in a tech chat to your site). if there are no plans to adjust or work to assist us. I mean right now I can't keep my vpn on connected to a server in my own country netflix detects it using a proxy or vpn and that is not trying to bypass any restrictions. can we get an official response from pia? I mean I can't keep my vpn on and say watch a show or now I have to keep recycling my router and changing its config if one person in the house off 5 devices wants to watch netflix. it's made usefulness completely lacking. its late and I hope I am starting a valid discussion not a gripe match.
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Other US based VPN companies, like Torguard, are bound by the same laws, and they have proudly announced that their users are still going to be able to access every country's Netflix catalog so long as Torguard has a server in that country. Also, from their statement (https://torguard.net/blog/netflix-announces-new-vpn-proxy-crackdown/#comments), and from various news articles, it seems like all a VPN provider has to do is deploy new server IP addresses, something that is "trivial" (http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/vpn-providers-mad-about-netflix-crackdown-but-say-they-can-evade-it/).
So I am simply baffled by PIA's response to Netflix's geoblocking. It's not illegal to deploy new IP addresses; it's not difficult; so why are they refusing to do so? Why can't they be like almost all other VPN providers? Why are they lying to us?
Like you, if I don't hear something from PIA soon, I'm cancelling. I've been a loyal customer for about half a year and this is what I get? When I chatted to tech support, all I got was a link to their statement on geoblocking and an offer to check if I'm properly connected to their servers. This is not only not a "step in the right direction," it's insulting.
I may have been mistaken about torguard being based in the US; deepdotweb.com told me it was but other sources say it is based in Panama. HOWEVER, ExpressVPN is based in the US and they're assisting their users in accessing geo-locked netflix content. Sources:
https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/watch-global-netflix-now/
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/41uar2/noooooooooooooooo/
The content Netflix can't stream worldwide is content they license from third parties, and the only reason they can't is because the studios have in many cases sold the rights on a limited time basis to country-specific distributors. HBO is an example, but there are hundreds of other lesser-knowns. This content distribution system is called "windowing," and it's a business model that's almost a century old. Windowing is a logistical and costly nightmare for everyone, rivaled in complexity only by the US tax code. The only true advocates of windowing are region and country-specific content distributors. This is in obvious conflict with Netflix's global market strategy.
Netflix is working hard to acquire the worldwide rights to most content it licenses, but there remain competing interests and it will take them several more years before Netflix ultimately succeeds. However, that success will be coming to the EU much sooner for Netflix. But in the meantime in the rest of the world it must play a juggling act of placating a 20th century business model while pushing their own business forward in the 21st century.
There are competing rights at stake, such as the rights of content subscribers to have access to services they pay for when they're traveling outside their home country. Thankfully the EU Parliament is less than sympathetic to country-specific distributors and the "windowing" system that only benefits greedy middlemen who stand in the way of digital-age progress. By 2017 windowing will be a thing of the past throughout the EU and European distributors will have to find an honest living that actually benefits consumers. Content subscribers will finally have the freedom to travel throughout the EU and have access to the same exact content they pay for back home.
These issues should be no different for the rest of the world. I should not be restricted from accessing my Netflix account merely because I travel outside the US, but at this time I am. It isn't Netflix itself who came up with this insane policy to restrict me but the distributors who threaten the studios who, in turn, threaten Netflix. I don't much care for the term "Netflix pirate" because I use a proxy or vpn to circumvent these unjust restrictions when I'm working outside the US.
Furthermore, I can't fault someone in Canada, Australia, or wherever who pays the same or more as I do for Netflix, wanting access to the same library I have access to, not a tiny fraction of the US library. Windowing is an antiquated business model that needs to die. It's a cartel if not monopolistic system that's completely contrary to a free market system. If so-called "Netflix pirates" are "cheating" anyone at all it's not Netflix, the studios, producers, actors, or anyone else. It's only the irrelevant and useless distributors who haven't added anything of value to consumers for years now, many millions of which have already "cut the cord," as have I.
I see evidence that at least some other vpns view things in a similar light and are willing to aid their customers in bypassing these unjust blocks. Needless to say PIA is free to make up its own mind and set its own policies on these matters. I just don't think they're making the right decision, nor is it in their own better business interests of gaining new customers, let alone retaining those who purchased PIA in the first place to evade these unjust blockades, and all because PIA offers itself up as a means of circumventing geo-based content restrictions.
To this very day PIA continues selling itself in this way, right on it's home page:
I think we all know what that means, and although the list doesn't explicitly name Netflix, by implication it really does. I haven't been able to access BBC iPlayer for weeks now and PIA has been apprised of that. Yet PIA continues advertising itself as a service to unblock these very restrictions. Frankly, I find that all rather dishonest, but all the more so in light of PIA's latest policy changes. Time for that statement on the homepage to go, PIA.
Why can't PIA just deploy new server IP addresses and see what happens? Exactly who are you afraid of? Law enforcement? Netflix? Content holders?
I bolded the only part I am replying to. There are no more IP addresses. There are more than seven billion people in the world, and if half of them have an average of four devices that require an IP address, yet IPv4 has only 4 billion addresses altogether, I think you can see the problem.
For a long time we have waited for a better solution than IPv6 to the problem. No better solution has happened. And at this point IPv6 is more of a problem than a solution for many complex reasons.
Also, think about it this way: the Netflix geo-blocks started for me about 5 days or a week ago. If I had been with another VPN provider, that's 5 days of unrestricted Netflix access, and I can keep on adding to that number as long as they keep on playing, as you say, "whac-a-mole," with Netflix. I guess the lesson here is it may be wiser to buy monthly now, since by doing so, you lose at most 30 days worth of payment.
And speaking of marketing and advertising, as other posters here have already said, the PIA homepage claims:
"Enjoy unrestricted access even when you are abroad! Stream iPlayer by BBC, Demand5, Facebook, Youtube, P2P and more with our anonymous VPN tunnel service!"
The user enzoweb above is abroad and he wants to stream iPlayer and yet he can't. I hope he does complain to the relevant regulatory agency that is supposed to deal with false advertsing.