Your Days of Watching American Netflix Are Over

Netflix, a.k.a that place where you binge watch Making a Murderer, just dropped a bombshell: Starting as of midnight last night (Thursday), Australians will no longer be able to access American Netflix via a proxy server.

If you have to ask why this even matters, you've obviously never tried to watch anything remotely obscure on Australian Netflix. Sudden urge to watch the 1950 cinematic classic Sunset Boulevard in Australia? Too bad, you can't. Or a lot of the time you don't have to even want something obscure—it's just anything that's not on their front page.

The US Netflix library by comparison is a rich pasture. Here's just a taste of what you can get there: Breaking Bad, Louie, Parks and Recreation, The Wonder Years, the original series of The Twilight Zone.

In a blog post, Netflix's auspiciously named "Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture" David Fullagar today announced the streaming service's new rules. The post basically explains why the decision sucks in its opening line: "If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn't be a reason for members to use proxies or 'unblockers' to fool our systems," Fullagar conceded.

Exactly. Using a VPN to access the US Netflix isn't the same as pirating content. Proxy users pay for memberships just like everyone else. If Netflix thinks they are wrong, why did they accept Australian credit cards for such a long time?

Wired's Julia Greenberg offers two potential explanations for the ban. First, Netflix has been under a lot of pressure from production companies to ensure customers don't access content from outside their own territories. You won't remember this, but you actually promised to not do that when you ticked 'yes' on the Netflix service agreement. The second reason is that 99 percent of the stuff on Netflix is shit. Greenberg thinks the ban is a way to push users into watching Netflix's original content, which doesn't have any regional restrictions.

There isn't any reason why in 2016, people outside of the US should have to wait for new shows or movies, if they ever arrive at all. But for some reason every DVD/digital movie release in Australia last year had an average delay of 57 days from when it first dropped in the US. Of the highest rated TV shows in 2015, only four were released in Australia within a day of their international premiere.

Can you really blame us for being some of the world's worst internet pirates?

I for one have decided to fight the ban by boycotting Netflix, right after I finish these last four episodes of Master of None.

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