Commentators have questioned Netflix’s power to stop members from using virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around regional restrictions on content, days after the streaming service announced a crackdown.

David Fullager, the vice-president of content delivery architecture for Netflix, wrote in a blog post on Thursday that “in coming weeks” Netflix members would only be able to access titles available in their territory, as the company worked towards offering the same films and TV series everywhere.



He did not give specifics about the technology that would be used to stop the use of VPNs, proxy servers or “unblockers” – only that Netflix employs “the same or similar measures other firms do” and that “this technology continues to evolve and we are evolving with it”.

But tech journalists and analysts have speculated that Fullager’s announcement might be an attempt to placate rights holders as Netflix strives towards making all of its content available across all of its catalogues – and that the use of VPNs will continue because it is too difficult to stop.

In early January – less than a fortnight before Fullager’s blog post was published – Netflix’s chief product officer, Neil Hunt, told the CES conference in Las Vegas that, though the company used “industry standard technologies” to limit the use of VPNs, it was restricted in how effectively it was able to target them.



“Since the goal of the proxy guys is to hide the source, it’s not obvious how to make that work well,” he said.

“It’s likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game. [We] continue to rely on blacklists of VPN exit points maintained by companies that make it their job. Once [VPN providers] are on the blacklist, it’s trivial for them to move to a new IP address and evade.”

Writing for the Conversation, David Glance of the University of Western Australia said it was “very unlikely” that Netflix would be able to block all known VPN providers.

“Netflix has had to maintain a delicate balance between showing the content holders that they are serious about restricting their content, and at the same time giving their customers what they really want,” he wrote. “Fullagar’s comments about blocking VPNs seem to be more about appearances than a serious shift in how they restrict their content.”

VPN provider TorGuard has already told its users “you don’t have to worry”.

Netflix has claimed that it polices the use of VPNs in the past, but Hunt has been relatively laissez-faire on several occasions, describing combating VPNs as a “whack-a-mole game” and “pretty hard to deal with”. He has also speculated that their use is probably exaggerated.

Netflix could choose to lock accounts to one country but that would also affect members’ ability to access the service while overseas – and too stringent restrictions could have the detrimental effect of forcing people to return to piracy.

Global licensing has the opposite effect, as shown by a 14% drop in the use of BitTorrent – a popular source of illegal movie and television downloads – in Australia after Netflix’s official launch there in March 2015. Unofficially, reports suggest as many as 200,000 Australians had already been accessing the service by VPN; it hit more than 1m subscribers in mid-November.

The consumer advocacy group Choice said in September the number of people regularly pirating in Australia had dropped by a quarter since the launch of Netflix. Following Fullager’s blog post, Choice spokesman Matt Levey urged Australians to share their knowledge about how to circumvent geo-blocks.

“Rather than putting barriers up, it’s time to recognise internet is global,” he said. “Regional copyright deals are as outdated as videocassettes. Ultimately, Australians should be able to pay for international services directly rather than be locked into sub-standard local versions.”

A Netflix spokesman on Friday declined to give specifics on how the crackdown would be enacted.

“Whilst we don’t share such data around VPN use, as we continue to strive towards licensing content on a global scale the use of VPNs will become redundant,” he said.

Last January, Netflix was forced to deny rumours that it was cracking down on VPN users following reports of blocked access.

At the time, the company said it was using “industry standard methods” to prevent their use. The vast majority of VPN users continued to be able to watch region-locked content without issues.