Will Geoblocking soon be dead

More users are getting savy on using VPN to defeat Geoblocking

[lgn1]

In the beginning, the internet was a global village. We could stream content from anywhere, without worrying about geographically based copyright agreements and ownership rights on media.

And then the corporate lawyers got involved, and streaming content was restricted only to the USA or the UK or some other region. First it was just the TV Channels, then Youtube and now radio stations. To the average consumer, the web is getting more and more resticted.

Fortunately Geoblocking can be defeated, but this task was originally for us tech savy people, who could reflash there own routers, to create whole home VPN connections to US or UK service providers.

Now as Geoblocking has become more evasive, I beginning to see a thriving market developing for geoblocking counter-measures for the masses.

Since their is no defence (other than legal) against VPN based countermeasures, will we begin to see the end of Geoblocking?

Will the media companies begin to work towards global agreements fot the distribution of their products, or will they become dinasaurs and try to sue everybody, and lobby to create laws to further reduce our rights?

I see the unrestricted access to content on the internet for viewing, as the next big fight.

[tangor]

SOPA is part of that challenge. And a fight of some kind will ensue, but I doubt it will be a brawl.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[J_RaD]

once the VPN services get popular for use against circumventing geoblocking the VPN service itself could be found on the black list.

I've seen VPN services used for X-Y-Z then once that becomes a popular use for said VPN its black listed and no longer works for what you wanted to use it for.

[incrediBILL]

Geoblocking will continue, as will blocking VPN, TOR and other proxies.

There are more products recently hitting the market that allow the webmaster to easily block these things so it's up to the webmaster who gets to see what, not the visitor.

The problem was that it used to require uber geek webmasters to block access to fancy uber geek proxies and that has changed. There is new simplified blocking technology available that allows any webmaster to install a simple script and start blocking whatever they want right away.

For the curious, SANS has a how-to guide for detecting and blocking all sorts of proxies:
[sans.org...]

[J_RaD]

best thing is to find your own solution and keep your mouth shut.

[lgn1]

VPN is not a proxy.

Can anybody give an example of a site that has defeated VPN geoblocking countermeasures. I have never encountered one.

People seeking freedom in the middle east, depend on this technology, and sometimes its a life or death situation.

I'm not talking piracy either. When I view Netflix in the states, somebody gets paid royalties in the states. I'm a net citizen, I get my digital content where I can get it, and I will pay my royalites to the first provider that I can find that has the licensed content. If the provider in my country does not offer the content, because they spend 3 years wrangling over license agreements, tough; you lost a sale.

[incrediBILL]

To explain my earlier post, while a VPN may not technically be a proxy many tunnel through HTTP proxies to maintain their anonymity, and HTTP proxies are easy to identify and block. Most VPN blocking is actually hosting center blocking, not geoblocking. Why it may appear to be geoblocking is many HTTP proxies come from Russia and the Ukraine which many of us block by default because of scrapers and spammers.

Heck, I block a lot of public VPNs simply because they come from data hosting centers and I have an extensive list of hosting centers being blocked. Since humans don't live in data centers, those aren't residential or business IPs, they get blocked. This eliminates the majority of proxies, public VPNs, etc. right from the start. Then of course I use public proxy lists to collect the proxy IPs that aren't in hosting centers.

Basically, that leaves real VPNs still getting access, but I don't worry about those because they aren't anonymous and leave a trail back to the source.

Legit VPN and Proxy users suffer because of scrapers attacking websites, so don't blame me for this blocking practice, blame the scrapers and spammers that force us to such extremes.

[lgn1]

Yes public proxies are often used for evil, and are actively shutdown. However I subscribe to a pay proxy service run by a large company, and they run a tight ship. Start spamming and you are out.

I did run across one website that has blocked every known VPN hosting server in the UK; and have blocked a lot of legitimate UK customers.

Now they have become a target and a challenge, and there is a thriving industry in new VPN's that can access this service.

Maybe this is why companies like Netflix, Hula and the major networks, take such a passive role, to Geoblocking. If they block the average user, then they can claim they are doing their job. However if they throw down the gauntlet; they will be challenged by every tech savy user in the kingdom.