blog If you’re a fan of hit US TV series Arrested Development (hell, who isn’t at this point?), you will have been buoyed by the news that US IPTV giant Netflix has bought the rights to a fourth season and stream it online. But then you would have been immediately depressed by the realisation that Netflix currently blocks Australians from subscribing to its popular service. At this point, most Australians who watch the show have probably resigned themselves to (ahem) obtaining it through Channel BitTorrent. But there is one organisation still maintaining the rage: Consumer advocacy group Choice, which has written to Netflix demanding to know what the hell is going on. Choice’s full letter (as posted on its Twitter this week) is below:
To be honest, your writer has pinged Netflix about Australian access a few times, and the IPTV giant has consistently shown little interest in the Australian market. We suspect Choice isn’t going to get anywhere with Netflix either; especially considering the company hasn’t even responded to Choice’s politely worded letter yet. However, this kind of initiative really can’t hurt. The more people that pester Netflix about an Australian launch, the more impetus the company has to focus on the local market.
Image credit: Choice
Use a VPN/Hola (http://hola.org/) and get around their stupid restrictions.
I say it again and again, they have every right to produce a product and decide who gets to see it, doesn’t give someone the right to access it without paying. They don’t make it available to me isn’t a valid excuse.
Whilst technically true, using the argument of it not being available so I should be allowed to pirate it, is flimsy at best. That isn’t what usually kicks up a stink.
It is when content owners/providers complain that their content is being pirated, showing there is a demand for it, and they still refuse to make it available.
Not all people who pirate something will obtain it legally if given the option affordably, but a would.
*but a percentage would
Yes they are within their rights to restrict access.
But its like everyone sitting at a banquet and the waiter brings out the food and puts it on the table.
He then asks the man across from you what he would want and after the order is taken, is served.
The waiter then ignores the other 7 people at the table.
Its polite to give your order to the waiter but the food is right there!
So 6 of the guests serve themselves and love the meal.
The last looks at the 6 who are eating and deplores that they partook of the banquet.
No one is saying consumers should have the right to an alternate means.
Whilst content providers have the right to do what they want, the problem is the business model they operate on was made obsolete 10+ years ago. They’re choosing to ignore that there is now so much demand for content in comparison to supply that they rob themselves of profit because people feel the providers are taking too long to ease region restrictions.
There’s plentiful people out there willing to pay for content, but said people feel let down due to total or partially unjustified region restrictions.
“alternate means” = channel BT.
Since they aren’t selling it to us; the “cost” (their loss) is zero; so everyone wins! We get to BT it and they don’t lose anything!
Sue us for triple damages! 3 times 0 is 0!
Saying it again and again doesnt make your point more valid.
Legally they have the right to refuse service, but in doing so they lose the right to complain about lost income.
Sure – as long as the Australian people agree that is the deal they want.
Copyright is not an inalienable right – the Australian people acting though their government can change this deal any time they see fit theoretically. We need to keep that in mind, that’s the whole point of a democracy.
If we’re not getting a fair deal with the overseas content suppliers we can actually change the rules they operate on in this country – probably with surprisingly little come-back (e.g. our US trade is really pretty one-sided, we’d lose very little economically if they put sanctions on our goods and they’re already major competitors in our other important markets).
Is it actually Netflix’s choice?
Is it possible they didn’t buy the distribution rights to Australia?
As to the comment on Companies not having to sell a product everywhere. You don’t have to sell it, but then don’t complain if others find a way to acquire it anyway. If that method of acquisition turns out to be simpler and more readily available than your own methods. Perhaps you should consider changing your methodology.
They paid for production.
Same as what happened with Hemlock Grove and House of Cards
Chances are though; they just paid for exclusive American distribution.
Ah didn’t catch that they had paid for production.
Still as you say that may not actually cover distribution everywhere, altho it seems odd that it doesn’t.
I am not a fan of the show… by the by…
VPN + netflix = win.
Netflix themselves own a local domain name and several trademarks and patent but no sign of the Netflix.com.au being use despite having such registered trademarks since at least 2003.. I did search IP Australia’s trademarks and patent databases to uncover the above.
They obviously are expanding to another European country this year-next year could be start of Asia/Oceania launches. That is based on one of their recent shareholders letters.
A vague response by one of Netflix’s spokesperson can been viewed at:
http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/28/arrested-development-torrent-piracy/
Netflix themselves own a local domain name and several trademarks and patent but no sign of the Netflix.com.au being use despite having such registered trademarks since at least 2003.. I did search IP Australia’s trademarks and patent databases to uncover the above.
They obviously are expanding to another European country this year-next year could be start of Asia/Oceania launches. That is based on one of their recent shareholders letters.
A vague response by one of Netflix’s spokesperson can been viewed at:
paidcontent.org/2013/05/28/arrested-development-torrent-piracy/
The disappointing thing about all this is that it’s another reminder of how it’s going to be a while until the business models of content holders properly adapt to the Internet age – and Australia is isolated by its relatively small size. Can’t fault the existing companies for trying to keep their business models that worked in the past, but it does highlight a huge gap between the way people want to consume their media and how they have access to it.
Gaming has been probably the best example of how the Internet can be used for distributions, the only problems with buying games online from an Australian perspective is the Australian publishing companies who are clinging to the region-based business model and making sure Australian consumers keep paying. The sooner the Australian publishing industry dies, the better.
And the same could be said for the Australian TV and film publishing industry. The sooner it dies, the better – and can be replaced by something that’s more amenable to the technology and preferences of the consumers. I can get most games, most ebooks, most audiobooks, and some music without the Australian markup/embargo; it’s time for movies and TV shows*. There is a demand, but not a supply. Quickflix is halfway there, but could really use some improvement in getting content away from DVDs and into streaming.
*The alternative, of course, is patience by waiting until one can buy it cheap on DVD.
+1 for most Of Kel’s post. I’m not a fan of seeing any Australian Industry die so I’d rather see them adapt and survive but for the rest … +1 :)
I have trouble understanding why the shareholders of these large media companies don’t make more noise about the way the companies seem to be hanging on desperately to the old business models. Spending millions (billions ?) on lobbying Governments to change laws to protect current models while resisting a major change to new models that would probably increase revenue and reduce the piracy problem seems crazy in the extreme. Add to that the cost of employing law firms to try and extract money from people that only seems to work a small percentage of the time and brings a huge amount of negative press seems to make it doubly stupid.
What the media companies are doing at the moment through Netflix, iTunes etc seems to be a token effort at best.
“I’m not a fan of seeing any Australian Industry die so I’d rather see them adapt and survive”
I suppose I could clarify a little bit.
I’ll start with a story. There’s an online game shop that operates out of the UK, but they sell to Australia. One day, they get word from one of the game publishing companies that they need to raise their prices for Australia / New Zealand, the reason being is that their cheap prices are hurting one of the brick-and-mortar retailers, and they’re threatening to stop selling that publisher’s stock. So this site, in the UK, is setting its prices (for Australians only) as a means to appease a brick-and-mortar store in Australia.
Now the thing is, as far as gaming goes, I don’t need this Australian retail chain to exist. Nor do I need the Australian publishers to exist either. The Internet means that now there’s less need for a large supply chain like their was in the physical era. And that’s the reason why; there’s simply too many unnecessary pieces that the consumer ultimately has to pay for. Each of those industries needs to be financially viable, and while I don’t want to see gaming houses die (which means paying for games), I don’t mind seeing that supply chain lose a few links.
I literally had to set my AppleTV to US mode and use an American DNS server (just google ‘DNS servers that work with Netflix) to access it. Took two minutes and it didn’t care my credit card was Australian.
I’ll probably cancel my account before the free trial period ends, because they seem unwilling to take Australian resident’s money.
Lucky we have that FTA
Regional agreements in Australia maybe unique to the Australia market then anywhere else
For example game of thrones might be a exclusive title on Foxtel. But there some lag time before appears elsewhere or Foxtel or FTA network may block any other content provider from displaying the content on their platform/device
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