With Netflix saying it intends to disable video when customers use VPN services, VPN providers are criticizing the online video company and vowing to evade any measures designed to prevent their use.

Under pressure from content owners, Netflix said last week that it will step up enforcement against subscribers who use VPNs, proxies, and unblocking services to view content not available in their countries. But even Netflix acknowledges that it's "trivial" for VPN providers to avoid blocks by switching IP addresses, and VPN providers say they're ready.

“Unfortunately, many legitimate paid subscribers will be left in the dark as an unavoidable outcome of overreaching IP blocks," TorGuard's Ben van der Pelt told TorrentFreak in an article yesterday. “TorGuard is monitoring the situation closely and we have recently implemented new measures that can bypass any proposed IP blockade on our network. VPN users who encounter Netflix access problems are encouraged to contact us for a working solution."

SlickVPN, another service, told the torrent news site that "If we find that our IP addresses start to become blocked we’ll migrate to new IPs as needed."

VyprVPN maker Golden Frog wrote a blog post protesting Netflix's announcement, arguing that many of its customers use VPNs to avoid ISP-level "throttling" or to boost privacy and security.

"These VPN users aren’t accessing any geo-restricted content. They are simply being proactive in taking steps to optimize their Internet experience," wrote Golden Frog President Sunday Yokubaitis.

Besides that, Netflix could enforce geographic content restrictions by using customer billing information, he wrote.

"I have to use VyprVPN to watch Netflix when abroad," Yokubaitis wrote. "It seems fair, though. I have a USA Netflix account (and billing address) so I should be able to watch Netflix. If Netflix blocks VPNs, then I would have to either subject myself to insecure hotel Wi-Fi or watch TV in a foreign language. Why can’t I just use the service I have paid for when I’m traveling?"

We were able to access Netflix over the Private Internet Access VPN today, though TorrentFreak reports that some VPN users are already seeing an error that says, "Whoops, something went wrong." Netflix says its VPN blocks will be enforced "in [the] coming weeks."