What is available to watch is tailored to each country as Netflix can't offer a single global service because of how titles are licensed

AHEAD of its Australian launch, movie and TV streaming service Netflix appears to be blocking those who access the service illegitimately.

At the moment, Netflix is only officially available in a handful of countries including the US and UK, but many in countries including Australia use workarounds to access the service remotely.

They are fairly simple — often just a Chrome extension or a virtual private network (VPN) — but TorrentFreak is reporting that Netflix has started to block some of these workarounds.

At the moment, they are specifically targeting VPNs and the more popular method of DNS spoofing. Not all are being affected right now, with the heavily used Chrome extension Hola still working, however this could be a test before a bigger ban is introduced.

As we pointed out late last year, Netflix will be adding to the already fragmented Australian market. Why? Because even though Netfix commissioned the shows in the US, their Australian rights are owned by Foxtel (partly owned by News Corp Australia, the publisher of news.com.au).

It’s not just these shows either that will be affected by this, with new Australian streaming service Stan claiming the exclusive rights to Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul. It’s these exclusive rights that each service owns that makes it harder for the consumer.

At the time, some online believed that continued access to the US library of shows via the workarounds would be a saviour. But it now seems that dream won’t be a reality.

harry.tucker@news.com.au