Is using Netflix in South Africa piracy?

P924 said:
This. Downloading content without a license in SA is a civil offense. The maximum settlement is the price of the content. However, you have already paid for it. So it will make for an interesting court case.
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It would be even more interesting to see how they determine what you have streamed, unless they plan to go directly to the service providers (Netflix, Hulu, etc)
 
Skerminkel said:
Yes, but the local distributors do pay for exclusive rights for the material in South Africa. Problem for them it is not going to get easier. They must learn to live with it. There will shortly be no such thing as exclusive rights. They should start paying for broadcasting and movie theatre rights only. I suspect they are negotiating it with the international distributors already!
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I read a while back that most studios are only willing to grant exclusive rights for up to 6 months for broadcasting/streaming.
 
Wonder how long these regional licencing arrangements will last.

Netflix and Amazon are now commissioning their own films and "tv" series. Do they release them to all regions at once, I wonder ? No reason why they shouldnt.

The main issue is that the established studios make more money selling to traditional broadcasters who rely on advertising revenue to fund these. The studios will lose revenue if these broadcasters stop paying or pay less because viewer are directed away. Many of these tv shows are used by broadcasters to fill prime time slots and therefore the broadcasters insist on exclusivity for the first run of a season.
 
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AdrianH said:
It would be even more interesting to see how they determine what you have streamed, unless they plan to go directly to the service providers (Netflix, Hulu, etc)
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Exactly. Not being in possession of the content should also make it much more interesting...
 
kianm said:
So i'm also pirating by using a US PSN account i guess. BS
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Thats not what they implying. What they are saying if you access content not licensed for the region you are in, then its piracy. Having the US account in itself is not piracy. If the content is restricted and you travel to the region and stream it then that is fine.

I serioulsy doubt individual subscriber is going to be prosecuted for using a US account outside of the US region. If anything Multichoice and ABC will sue Netflix. This is why occasionally Netflix blocks some VPN's. They have probably received a nasty letter from some lawyers, so they crack down a bit.
 
bwana said:
No, the question is will they abandon region shifting technology and settle for domestically available content only.
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i've seen on another site, discussing Netflix coming to SA and other countries... "they will be stopping the region locking and offer the full package everywhere". ... remains to be seen.

still if you're paying Netflix for their (legitimate) distribution services, i dont see how u can call it piracy, same with Hulu? this is nothing like copying IP material or downloading torrents of IP, but a legit viewing distribution service?
Using Netflix is same as MTN's streaming service ... (only 'grey' area being the circumventing of the region lock.
So the issue here is connecting to the service, not streaming the content itself
 
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zippy said:
Netflix and Amazon are now commissioning their own films and "tv" series. Do they release them to all regions at once, I wonder ? No reason why they shouldnt.
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And some of those are quite popular on DSVT…

AFAIK yes, they, well Netflix at least, releases them everywhere at once.
 
P924 said:
This. Downloading content without a license in SA is a civil offense. The maximum settlement is the price of the content. However, you have already paid for it. So it will make for an interesting court case.
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That's why these articles claiming the end user is guilty of copyright infringement under South African law continue to be wrong. The user is perhaps guilty of misrepresentation in acquiring the service, but they have paid for the product they received.

Skerminkel said:
Yes, but the local distributors do pay for exclusive rights for the material in South Africa.
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But that's between them and the streaming service. They have no claim against the user of the service.
 
Mighty said:
what I don't quite understand is this....

Our ISP's have every right to block these torrent applications, VPN services, DNS services and the like...

yet they don't? So who are the real Pirates?
That is like moaning at your dog for eating the meat YOU left out without taking precaution to pack it away!
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It's not up to ISPs to tell you that you may not use certain protocols because of the possibility of there being copyright infringement. It's up to the end user to adopt that responsibility, and the ISP to manage a network that allows a user access to legal protocols, which torrent protocols are. The only time an ISP makes changes in this respect is for general network management (i.e. torrents on fast lines can open thousands of concurrent connections to peers at the same time and if this goes unabated it could cause load on core routers and reduce performance for everyone.)

I don't believe it should be the responsibility of an ISP to police your internet, and I firmly believe that such an action would be tantamount to invasion of privacy. The law agrees too, which is why application layer access per account is not logged by ISPs. Suggesting that ISPs become the outsourced police-enforcement agencies for copyright holders is passing the buck by the copyright holders, and quite absurd. If I provide you with water as a service, it's not my responsibility to ensure that you don't go drown people in said water. That's the police's job. If the copyright holders want their own police force, they'd better be prepared to lobby global governments to all acquiesce to their demands. Or they need to catch a wake-up and evolve their distribution models with the times, together with the licensing rights models, which are frankly, antiquated in general.
 
Meh, most of the movies I watch, are decent idie type stuff, that will NEVER be shown here anyways. It all boils down to monochoice that wants a full monopoly on all content. Fukk3m
 
Mighty said:
what I don't quite understand is this....

Our ISP's have every right to block these torrent applications, VPN services, DNS services and the like...

yet they don't? So who are the real Pirates?
That is like moaning at your dog for eating the meat YOU left out without taking precaution to pack it away!
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ISP's don't have any right to block access.
ISP's are neutral and are not supposed to / not allowed to block services (VPN/DNS,etc).
It's probably illegal for ISP's to block access.

The distributor (Netflix) is the one that blocks access.
 
Mighty said:
Cool makes sense :)
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i do know however, that the ISP's are very capable of throttling the torrents etc...
if it is so illegal, then why don't they throttle such connections to Netflix and Hulu etc so it would be too painful for users use illegally and they won't bother lol....obviously i would'nt want them to because i love my netflix, im just saying the ISP can't exactly just leave all users to do their own thing.....Parents are still responsible for their kids at school even thought their are teachers watching them!
 
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