Is Amazon following in the footsteps of Netflix?

I am not only blogging about Netflix, but also about Amazon Prime. Recently I have seen an increase of comments from people blocked by Amazon.com with the 4601 error message, also when using a VPN.

For a long time it seemed as if Netflix was hunting down the IP addresses used by VPN providers all by themselves. No other streaming service or TV network seemed to take the battle against users overseas as Netflix did. That seems to change now however, because not only do Amazon users abroad suffer from VPN blocks and the 4601 error message, but the same can be experienced with quite a lot of other streaming services as well.

If you want to read the comments from people who are blocked by Amazon after using a VPN, click the article above. Now, this was kind of expected, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone. Amazon is not alone doing so either, because recently I also discovered that Tenplay in Australia and BBC in the UK are blocking lots of VPN and SmartDNS services as well.

road-is-closed-for-vpn-users
The road is closed for VPN users who want to watch Amazon Videos and Netflix – Mario Hagen / Shutterstock

What does the future hold for us?

Now you might ask what the future has in hold for us with more and more services being hard to reach and watch from abroad. The final goal of most streaming services is to reach a global audience. The goal of Netflix is for their catalog to become available to people of all nations at the same time. That will of course not work when they buy content from cable networks since they have to pay attention to the rights to broadcast certain shows in other nations. But, we already see the global Netflix in use when it comes to their own original TV series.

Before the Netflix VPN battle started I expected the VPN providers to win the battle. I was mostly wrong, because the amount of VPN providers not working anymore with Netflix is far greater than the amount of VPN providers working with Netflix. There are holes in the “anti-VPN” protection from Netflix and you can read more about them here, but they are really effective in their job.

I do believe still that there will always be holes in any such “VPN-block”, but it might come a day when the general user will find it to hard and complicated finding a VPN provider that works with Amazon, Netflix, HBO Now and Hulu making them download the movies and TV series using a Torrent application and website instead. And who will loose then? The streaming services who did their uttermost to block these users.

 

Leave a Reply