Here in Canada almost all English language content is licensed to a single company, Bell. They systematically deny any access to Netflix and started their own service, Crave TV. They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.
They are taking advantage of a government granted monopoly they had in the 1900's and now control a disproportionate amount of the media in Canada.
> They are the one responsible for the great Proxy/VPN banning this year.
At first, I thought this meant Netflix banning all use of VPN for streaming. Searching news articles shows in fact a Rogers VP rep had called on the government to outright ban VPN universally[1], but this was back in spring 2015. You are saying this has actually been made law and is enforced?
How did this pass when major corporations require VPNs, and I presume also government officials use it for sensitive communications?
This is _insane_ if it actually happens .. a move I want to compare to China, except here it's the government bending to the will of a corporation, not the other way around!
Dumb stuff is proposed all the time in US proposals[1,2] but with great effort they get rejected (not all, sadly).
You may have to find a manual solution. Have you tried spawning a VPS in the US and connecting to it via Shadowsocks?[1] I apparently can sign up for an account when routed through such a setup and Netflix doesn't seem to think it's a VPN (this was a VPS hosted in Germany, however). I can give more details if interested.
Do you then have to create a separate account "from the US"?
Netflix made sense when we could watch movies from any countries, not just the US. A lot of smaller countries would have movies not available in US/Canada but still in English.
Also: I'm happy to pay for content, but if I have to hack my way around to the point that it's harder than pirating...
So, I was in Toronto in August and used my Netflix account to view movies at the hotel. I think it may have given me the Netflix Canada catalog (since it was over the hotel WiFi). I found that Netflix Canada catalog to be way superior to the one I see in the US. E.g Star Wars TFA was on the catalog, but not there when I got back to the US. Same with Elysium, etc.
It's funny you say that because as a Canadian Netflix user, almost every single person I know prefers the American Netflix catalog. Star Wars TFA is pretty much a one-off, we rarely get new blockbuster movies added to the Canadian catalog this soon after release.
They are taking advantage of a government granted monopoly they had in the 1900's and now control a disproportionate amount of the media in Canada.