Updated on December 10, 2021
Netflix has announced it’s expanding to nearly every available country on Earth. While it’s already been available in some countries outside the US, this greatly expands Netflix’s reach. The only countries it won’t operate in are China, Syria, North Korea, and Crimea. Does this mean it’ll become available in areas like Iran, then?
Thanks to the fractured state of media rights, the available TV shows and movies in each country’s version of Netflix vary. This has lead some to use proxies/virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around region-blocking, and watch international versions of Netflix. Unfortunately, Netflix has also announced that it plans to crack down on the use of VPNs and proxies. It remains to be seen how successful these attempts to block proxies/VPNs will be, however.
Given Netflix doesn’t (heavily) mind people sharing login passwords and the difficulty of such a proxy-blocking task, I wonder if they only said that to appease the movie/TV studios, who’re extremely protective of their intellectual property. Netflix’s ultimate goal is offering as much of its library as possible on a “worldwide” basis, which they hope would negate the need of proxies.
Do any of you use a proxy to view Netflix content from another country? Or a proxy for any other similar streaming services (Hulu, etc.)?
