Geo-blocking, geoblocking or geolocking is technology that restricts access to Internet content based upon the user's geographical location. In a geo-blocking scheme, the user's location is determined using Internet geolocation techniques, such as checking the user's IP address against a blacklist or whitelist, GPS queries in the case of a mobile device, accounts, and measuring the end-to-end delay of a network connection to estimate the physical location of the user. [1] [2] The IP address location tracking, a field pioneered by Cyril Houri, the inventor of one of the first systems capable of identifying a user's geographical location via their IP address. [3] is typically used for geo-blocking. This technology have become widely used in fraud prevention, advertising, and content localization, which are integral to geo-blocking applications. [4] The result of the checks is used to determine whether the system will approve or deny access to the website or to particular content. The geolocation may also be used to modify the content provided, for example, the currency in which goods are quoted, the price or the range of goods that are available, besides other aspects.
The term is most commonly associated with its use to restrict access to premium multimedia content on the Internet, such as films and television shows, primarily for copyright and licensing reasons. There are other uses for geo-blocking, such as blocking malicious traffic or to enforce price discrimination, location-aware authentication, fraud prevention, and online gambling (where gambling laws vary by region).
The ownership of exclusive territorial rights to audiovisual works may differ between regions, requiring the providers of the content to disallow access for users outside of their designated region; for example, although an online service, HBO Now is only available to residents of the United States, and cannot be offered in other countries because its parent network HBO had already licensed exclusive rights to its programming to different broadcasters (such as in Canada, where HBO licensed its back-catalogue to Bell Media), who may offer their own, similar service specific to their own region and business model (such as Crave). [5] [6] For similar reasons, the library of content available on subscription video on demand services such as Netflix may also vary between regions, or the service may not even be available in the user's country at all. [7] [8]
Geo-blocking can be used for other purposes as well. Price discrimination by online stores can be enforced by geo-blocking, forcing users to buy products online from a foreign version of a site where prices may be unnecessarily higher than those of their domestic version (although the inverse is often the case). The "Australia Tax" has been cited as an example of this phenomenon, which has led to governmental pressure to restrict how geo-blocking can be used in this manner in the country. [9] [10]
Geo-blocking is also applied to enforce compliance with local laws and regulations. One notable example is the Ligue contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme et Union des étudiants juifs de France v. Yahoo! ( LICRA v. Yahoo! ) case in 2000. The Tribunal de grande instance of Paris ruled that Yahoo! must prevent French users from accessing its auction sites where Nazi memorabilia were being sold, in violation of Article R645-1 of the French Criminal Code, and it was demonstrated that IP geolocation could be used to filter at least 90% of traffic coming from France. [11]
Other noted uses include blocking access from countries that a particular website is not relevant to (especially if the majority of traffic from that country is malicious), [12] and voluntarily blocking access to content or services that are illegal under local laws. This can include online gambling, [13] and various international websites blocking access to users within the European Economic Area due to concerns of liability under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). [14] [15] [16]
Geo-blocking can be circumvented. When IP address-based geo-blocking is employed, virtual private network (VPN) and anonymizer services can be used to evade geo-blocks. A user can, for example, access a website using a U.S. IP address in order to access content or services that are not available from outside the country. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and BBC iPlayer are among the foreign video services widely used through these means by foreign users. [2] Its popularity among VPN users in the country prompted Netflix to officially establish an Australian version of its service in 2014. [17] In response to complaints over the quality of domestic coverage by NBC, along with a requirement for viewers be a subscriber to a participating pay television provider in order to access the online content, a large number of American viewers used VPN services to stream foreign online coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2014 Winter Olympics from British and Canadian broadcasters. Unlike NBC's coverage, this foreign coverage only used a geo-block and did not require a TV subscription. [18]
However, many services, including Netflix, [19] Hulu, [20] and even Wikipedia, [21] have implemented measures to recognize and limit or block the use of VPNs by identifying IP addresses associated with such services. This limits users' ability to access geo-blocked content through VPNs or anonymizers.
In 2009, Venezuela subsidized the launch of the communications satellite Venesat-1, in part to amplify Telesur's programming by enabling it to avoid geo-blocking efforts by DirectTV, an American company. [22]
In 2013, the New Zealand internet service provider Slingshot introduced a similar feature known as "global mode"; initially intended for travellers to enable access to local websites blocked in New Zealand, the service was re-launched in July 2014 as a feature to all Slingshot subscribers. The consumer-focused re-launch focused on its ability to provide access to U.S. online video services. [7] [17] [18] [23] Unlike manually-configured VPN services, Global Mode was implemented passively at the ISP level and was automatically activated based on a whitelist, without any further user intervention. [24]
The legality of circumventing geo-blocking to access foreign video services under local copyright laws is unclear and varies by country. [24] Members of the entertainment industry (including broadcasters and studios) have contended that the use of VPNs and similar services to evade geo-blocking by online video services is a violation of copyright laws, as the foreign service does not hold the rights to make its content available in the user's country—thus infringing and undermining the rights held by a local rights holder. [8] [23] [25] Accessing online video services from outside the country in which they operate is typically considered a violation of their respective terms of use; some services have implemented measures to block VPN users, despite there being legitimate uses for such proxy services, under the assumption that they are using them to evade geographic filtering. [8] [23] [26] [7] [6] [27]
Leaked e-mails from the 2014 Sony Pictures hack revealed statements by Keith LeGoy, Sony Pictures Television's president of international distribution, describing the international usage of Netflix over VPN services as being "semi-sanctioned" piracy that helped to illicitly increase its market share, and criticizing the company for not taking further steps to prevent usage of the service outside of regions where they have licenses to their content, such as detecting ineligible users via their payment method. [8] [23] On 14 January 2016, Netflix announced its intent to strengthen measures to prevent subscribers from accessing regional versions of the service that they are not authorized to use. [28]
In Australia, a policy FAQ published by then Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull, states that users violating an "international commercial arrangement to protect copyright in different countries or regions" is not illegal under copyright law of Australia. [23] However, an amendment to Australian copyright law allows courts to order the blocking of websites that primarily engage in "facilitating" copyright infringement—a definition which could include VPN services that market themselves specifically for the purpose of evading geo-blocking. [23] [29] Prior to the passing of this amendment in June 2015, Turnbull acknowledged that VPN services have "a wide range of legitimate uses, not least of which is the preservation of privacy—something which every citizen is entitled to secure for themselves—and [VPN providers] have no oversight, control or influence over their customers' activities." [30]
On 6 May 2015, the European Union announced the adoption of its "Digital Single Market" strategy, which would, among other changes, aim to end the use of "unjustified" geo-blocking between EU countries, arguing that "too many Europeans cannot use online services that are available in other EU countries, often without any justification; or they are re-routed to a local store with different prices. Such discrimination cannot exist in a Single Market." [31] [32] However, proposals issued by the European Commission on 25 May 2016 excluded the territorial licensing of copyrighted audiovisual works from this strategy. [33] [34]
On 1 April 2018, new digital media portability rules took effect, which requires paid digital media services to offer "roaming" within the EU. This means that, for example, a subscriber to Netflix in one EU country must still be able to access their home country's version of the service when travelling into other EU countries. [35] [36] [37]
The European Union has approved the Regulation on Measures to Combat Unjustified Geoblocking and Other Forms of Discrimination Based on Citizenship, Place of Residence or Location of a Person in the Internal Market, which entered into force on 3 December 2018. [38]
The geo-blocking regulation aims to provide more options for consumers and businesses in the EU internal market. It addresses the problem that (potential) customers cannot buy goods and services from sellers located in another Member State for reasons related to their citizenship, place of residence or location, and therefore discriminate against them when they try to get access to the best offers, prices or terms of sale compared to the nationals or residents of the member state of the sellers.
The new rules only apply if the other party is a consumer or a company that purchases services or products exclusively for end use (B2C, B2B). Geo-blocking regulation does not apply if products are sold to business customers for commercial purposes. The Geoblocking Ordinance does not completely prohibit geoblocking and geo-discrimination: it only prohibits certain forms.
Geo-blocking regulations prohibit geo-blocking and geo-discrimination in three situations:
The prohibition of direct or indirect discrimination on the basis of citizenship is a fundamental principle of EU law. In situations not covered by this Regulation, Article 20 (2) of the Services Directive (2006/123 / EC) may apply. According to this provision, sellers can only apply a difference of treatment based on nationality or place of residence if this is justified by objective criteria. In some cases, industry-specific legislation (such as transport or health) may also apply that addresses this issue. In addition, the Regulation does not affect the TFEU rules, including the non-discrimination rules. [39]
In April 2015, a group of media companies in New Zealand, including MediaWorks, Spark, Sky Network Television, and TVNZ, jointly sent cease and desist notices to several ISPs offering VPN services for the purpose of evading geo-blocking, demanding that they pledge to discontinue the operation of these services by 15 April 2015, and to inform their customers that such services are "unlawful". The companies accused the ISPs of facilitating copyright infringement by violating their exclusive territorial rights to content in the country, and misrepresenting the alleged legality of the services in promotional material. In particular, Spark argued that the use of VPNs to access foreign video on demand services was cannibalizing its own domestic service Lightbox. At least two smaller providers (Lightwire Limited and Unlimited Internet) announced that they would pull their VPN services in response to the legal concerns. However, CallPlus, the parent company of Slingshot and Orcon, objected to the claims, arguing that the Global Mode service was "completely legal", and accused the broadcasters of displaying protectionism. Later that month, it was reported that the broadcasters planned to go forward with legal action against CallPlus. [2] [23] [40]
On 24 June 2015, it was announced that the media companies reached an out-of-court settlement, in which ByPass Network Services, who operates the service, would discontinue it effective 1 September 2015.
Telecommunications in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is under the control and supervision of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority which was established under UAE Federal Law by Decree No. 3 of 2003. From 1976 to 2006 the Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) was the sole telephone and telecommunications provider for the UAE. And while there were exceptions for free zones and modern housing developments, for the majority of the UAE, Etisalat held a monopoly on business and personal telecommunications services. In February 2006, this monopoly became a duopoly when a new telephone company and Internet service provider (ISP), du, was established to offer mobile services across the UAE and Internet and TV services to some free zone areas. However, due to geographical distribution of service areas, the companies do not compete for customers and thus effectively operate as monopolies. Earlier du provided triple play services to free zone areas under the name Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), which is still its legal name.
China censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government, and severely restricting freedom of the press. China's censorship includes the complete blockage of various websites, apps, and video games, inspiring the policy's nickname, the Great Firewall of China, which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing, blocking access to IP addresses, analyzing and filtering URLs, packet inspection, and resetting connections.
IP address blocking or IP banning is a configuration of a network service that blocks requests from hosts with certain IP addresses. IP address blocking is commonly used to protect against brute force attacks and to prevent access by a disruptive address. It can also be used to restrict access to or from a particular geographic area; for example, syndicating content to a specific region through the use of Internet geolocation.
A regional lockout is a class of digital rights management preventing the use of a certain product or service, such as multimedia or a hardware device, outside a certain region or territory. A regional lockout may be enforced through physical means, through technological means such as detecting the user's IP address or using an identifying code, or through unintentional means introduced by devices only supporting certain regional technologies.
The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.
Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent transfer rates regardless of content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication. Net neutrality was advocated for in the 1990s by the presidential administration of Bill Clinton in the United States. Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, set a worldwide example for net neutrality laws and the regulation of ISPs.
Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behavior rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.
On the Internet, a block or ban is a technical measure intended to restrict access to information or resources. Blocking and its inverse, unblocking, may be implemented by the owners of computers using software.
Net bias is the counter-principle to net neutrality, which indicates differentiation or discrimination of price and the quality of content or applications on the Internet by ISPs. Similar terms include data discrimination, digital redlining, and network management.
VPN blocking is a technique used to block the encrypted protocol tunneling communications methods used by virtual private network (VPN) systems. Often used by large organizations such as national governments or corporations, it can act as a tool for computer security or Internet censorship by preventing the use of VPNs to bypass network firewall systems.
In internet governance, network sovereignty, also called digital sovereignty or cyber sovereignty, is the effort of a governing entity, such as a state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries.
Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player. The application provides a piracy-based alternative to subscription-based video streaming services such as Netflix. Popcorn Time uses sequential downloading to stream video listed by several torrent websites, and third-party trackers can also be added manually. The legality of the software depends on the jurisdiction.
Hola is a freemium web and mobile application which provides a form of VPN service to its users through a peer-to-peer network. It also uses peer-to-peer caching. When a user accesses certain domains that are known to use geo-blocking, the Hola application redirects the request to go through the computers and Internet connections of other users in non-blocked areas, thereby circumventing the blocking. Users of the free service share a portion of their idle upload bandwidth to be used for serving cached data to other users. Paying users can choose to redirect all requests to peers but are themselves never used as peers.
TunnelBear is a public VPN service based in Toronto, Canada. It was created by Daniel Kaldor and Ryan Dochuk in 2011. In March 2018, TunnelBear was acquired by McAfee.
Netflix is a subscription streaming service owned by the American company Netflix, Inc. Launched on August 29, 1997, it initially offered DVD rental and sale by mail, but the sales were eliminated within a year to focus on the DVD rental business. In 2007, the company began transitioning to its current subscription streaming model. Since its launch, the company was subject to numerous criticisms, the basis of which range from its business practices and workplace culture to issues with the service it provides, including content issues, lack of close captioning and pricing. This article provides an overview of key criticisms the company has faced.
Net neutrality is the principle that governments should mandate Internet service providers to treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.
HMA is a VPN service founded in 2005 in the United Kingdom. It has been a subsidiary of the Czech cybersecurity company Avast since 2016.
PureVPN is a commercial VPN service owned by GZ Systems Ltd. Founded in 2007, the company is based in the British Virgin Islands.
A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.
Snowflake is a software package for assisting others in circumventing internet censorship by relaying data requests. Snowflake relay nodes are meant to be created by people in countries where Tor and Snowflake are not blocked. People under censorship then use a Snowflake client, packaged with the Tor Browser or Onion Browser, to access the Tor network, using Snowflake relays as proxy servers. Access to the Tor network can in turn give access to other blocked services. A Snowflake node can be created by either installing a browser extension, installing a stand-alone program, or browsing a webpage with an embedded Snowflake relay. The node runs whenever the browser or program is connected to the internet.