
Netflix to expand to Germany, France and Switzerland - nkurz
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27496055
======
jordigh
I find it so ridiculous that an internet company has to "expand" to another
country.

Why can't it just be a matter of removing the geoip checks from your servers?

(I know, I know, still... the internet was not meant to be this way.)

~~~
Drakim
If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing
them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

It makes sense that they might have to get local servers, or at least test the
waters before opening the floodgates.

~~~
jordigh
> If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing
> them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

That's not the limiting reactant. The actual issue with region lockout is
copyright bullshit.

~~~
ansimionescu
This. The fact that most people seem this ignorant to practical law issues is
a major part of why the overall situation (patents, Hollywood, etc) is as
shitty as it is, methinks. Uneducated flocks are easier to steer.

------
grosbisou
> "More likely, we'll figure out some stuff's working, some stuff's not; we'll
> adjust the formula."

I absolutely love this mindset from Netflix. Every conf talk, article I hear
from them they talk about stuff that didn't work, that did work for a while
but didn't scale. Then show what worked better.

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Ecio78
_Netflix also must contend with the fact that French audiovisual laws require
local broadcasters to invest significant sums in domestic content. However,
Les Echos newspaper has suggested Netflix might get around this by basing the
service in Luxembourg._

Actually Netflix is already based in Luxembourg for its European activities
and there have been news that they're going to move to Netherlands:
[http://www.wort.lu/en/business/move-to-the-netherlands-
netfl...](http://www.wort.lu/en/business/move-to-the-netherlands-netflix-to-
give-up-luxembourg-hq-537b643ab9b3988708027f67)

~~~
dorfsmay
Aren't there equivalent laws in Canada (minimum canadian content)? Netflix is
available in Canada.

~~~
Pxtl
The CRTC has basically washed their hands any internet content. They worry
about the internet itself, but not the actual stuff you put on it the way they
worry about radio/cable/broadcast content. It's naive and inconsistent but as
a Netflix fan I can't really complain about it.

To their credit, Netflix does license a bunch of Canadian content from the CBC
and Global TV, which shows a good-faith attempt to provide Canadian content. I
doubt they pay much for it though, and I doubt their ratio matches the CRTC's
requirements.

------
dan_bk
Well, it remains legal to download music and movies in Switzerland (PirateBay
& Co), so there's that.

~~~
syjer
In Switzerland, you can legally download but not upload, so bittorrent should
not be considered safe.

The interesting loophole for the bittorrent users is the fact that a private
company cannot arvest the ip ( [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathe...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathering-ip-addresses-from-bittorrent-sites-
illegal/) ) addresses from trackers, thus making quite hard the prosecution.
(And from past cases, it looks like they will prosecute only people that are
doing it for money, not for personal use).

Interesting move from netflix, but I'm quite curious how they will handle the
localization of the content. Will they provide italian and french content too
in Switzerland? Or like everybody else, they will ignore us linguistic
minorities?

~~~
ben0x539
How hard can it be to disable upload in bittorrent clients and be a bad but
considerably more legal torrent citizen?

~~~
syjer
not hard at all obviously.

Anyway, given the current legal situation in Switzerland, uploading data with
bittorrent while downloading some music/film is basically a no risk activity.

------
frik
The title is incomplete/misleading - six European countries, not just 3:

    
    
      Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg

~~~
stdbrouw
A policy on maximum title length, most likely.

On a side note, Belgium has a higher population than Austria, and Austria a
higher population than Switzerland, so the only reason for specifically
mentioning Switzerland in the title seems to be that it has a nice ring to it
:-)

------
erikb
I'm a German and want to say there is no real competition here. As far as I'm
concerned we are waiting desperately for a reasonable streaming service! Even
watching in English would not be a problem as long as we could have Netflix!
There are people here paying VPN and Netflix, so money should not be an issue.

~~~
morsch
Eh? There's at least two large video-on-demand streaming services by large
companies like Vivendi and Amazon in Germany. Maybe you don't like what they
offer (I don't), but saying there's no competition is far-fetched.

~~~
erikb
Please don't take it too literal.

~~~
sscalia
What? This is hacker news!

------
w1ntermute
> while French TV has a lot of subtitling - in Germany foreign language movies
> and TV shows are generally voiced over

Can anyone explain why this is? I hate watching dubbed video, especially when
it's live action.

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
Dutch people prefer subtitles. German, Italian, Spanish and French people
prefer dubbing. It's weird and I don't know why it is. Things just evolved to
be like that.

~~~
ardemue
Where do you get this impression? I've lived in France my whole life and most
people I know try to avoid subtitles as much as possible. Most of the foreign
TV contents are dubbed anyway, except on a few channels (Arte).

This may be less true for the new generation accustomed to watching subtitled
TV shows on the internet, instead of waiting for a few years to get them in
French on TV.

~~~
philjohn
This.

I grew up in Belgium, and there were two versions of films on - V.O. (Version
Originale) which had two sets of subtitles (Flemish and French) and V.F.
(Version Francaise).

The cinema usually had far more Flemish speaking people in the VO screenings
than French speaking, so I assume they went to the VF ones.

------
revelation
Wonder how that will work out for them. Both Deutsche Telekom and Kabel
Deutschland provide their own video on demand services, and together they
cover pretty much 99% of all last mile infrastructure.

This is the one thing where they are ahead even of the US competition, which
is still deciding if they should "do this content thing" and keeping the
network deadlocked and at standstill in the meantime (as the wise aristocrats
decide).

------
aves
With a scant choice of movies on Netflix UK (most of which are either old or
at the bottom of the box-office leaderboard) doubt they'll gain any
significant traction in EU. I'd rather have them spend extra cash to acquire
licences for streaming popular movies and TV shows in EU.

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johansch
Netflix launched in Sweden about 1.5 years ago. Last week the results of a
poll of the public was presented: About 1 million Swedes have access to
Netflix streaming at their home. This is out of a population of about 9
million.

