More consumers turning to VPN services to access geoblocked video content

Retail Internet encryption services are growing in popularity as a means for average Internet users to bypass “geoblocks” that deny access to online video content outside their national borders, technology industry insiders said. These virtual private network (VPN) services anonymize online users by encrypting their data transfers and running them through foreign servers. A Canadian user of a VPN service can bypass “geoblocks” on American websites offering video content, which can block IP addresses that originate outside the United States. The services allow users to shop online or subscribe to the American versions of Netflix or Hulu as if they were U.S. residents. Bill Bullock, CEO of VPN service provider WiTopia, Inc., said in a phone interview that many people use the company's “personalVPN” service to access online video content. Bullock declined to say how many customers WiTopia has now but said users have at least doubled each year since the company launched the service in March 2005. He said the company has many Canadian users who access content in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. “We’ve been at least doubling every year,” he said. “We see a lot of that cross-border type of access being done through VPN, and because it’s encrypted, it adds to the ability to , privately and anonymously.” WiTopia, based in Reston, Va., costs $6 US per month or $50 US per year, according to its website. The company has about 300 servers worldwide, Bullock said, including three in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Toronto-based VPN service provider TunnelBear Inc. says on its website that it offers an easy-to-use consumer VPN software that “tunnels” encrypted Internet connections to locations around the world. “TunnelBear can be used to protect your privacy, to bypass internet censorship and to experience the internet as people in other countries experience it,” its website says. “TunnelBear creates a secure, encrypted connection between your computer, tablet or smartphone and a server in the host country you want to connect to. If your communications are intercepted before they reach the TunnelBear servers, they'll just look like unreadable jargon. To the internet it will look like your signal originated in the host server country.” Ryan Dochuk, describing himself as the “Corporate Bear” of TunnelBear, said in an emailed statement to The Wire Report that the program has “hundreds of thousands of users from all over the world.” Dochuk said the company has been successful by offering a VPN service “simple enough that anyone can use it, not just the techies. We think everyone should have access to private, secure connections to the internet.” TunnelBear's unlimited service costs $5 per month or $50 per year, according to its website. Other VPN service providers include Unblock Us, Inc., and StreamVia. Distribution deals to provide content online are negotiated with rights holders separately in each jurisdiction. That means each country's availability of shows and movies varies depending on which companies have the rights to distribute the programming. Bullock said the company’s VPN service experienced a “dramatic increase” of users during this summer's London 2012 Olympics, when NBCUniversal Media, LLC, which had the exclusive online distribution rights to the Games, time-delayed by several hours the streaming of popular programming like the opening ceremonies. Bullock said many users turned to WiTopia’s service to access geoblocked live streams of the Olympics by the BBC in the U.K. “We didn’t advertise anything. We didn’t seek new users. We didn’t promote the service ... but nevertheless, people were talking,” he said. “With a VPN, you’re able to log on to a U.K. server of your VPN provider and view what people in the U.K. can see themselves.” Jason Roks, an independent researcher on technology and its social implications in Toronto, who in the 1990s founded the former startup Hotline Communications Inc., said in a phone interview that VPN services are “starting to get there” at a consumer level due to a need for them. He said that, for many people, political contexts like the Arab Spring make VPN services necessary. Roks said he has clients in China who often have to switch their VPN services if the Chinese government decrypts it and they can no longer “get around the Great Wall of China.” VPN services traditionally route all of a customers' traffic through a VPN and the provider's servers, but that has become costly as customers use the services to stream video, he said. Some new VPN providers run the location authentication through a VPN encryption, and afterwards, stream the content through the customer's regular channel, Roks said. “There're new ones coming out that really take advantage of the way authentication is done on things like Netflix and Hulu. They do the authentication at a VPN level but send all the bandwidth through the regular connection,” he said. He said he uses a VPN service to access the American version of Netflix, which offers better programming than Canadian Netflix. Canadian broadcast distributors like BCE Inc.or Rogers Communications Inc. have the rights to online programming and often limit access to it in Canada, he said. Chris Parsons, a network expert and doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria, agreed in a phone interview that VPN services are growing as more video content is put online. “Because it’s not available in Brazil, or quite often in Canada, you’re seeing people masking their IP address to get around geoblocking systems that are set up,” he said. Parsons said VPN services are primarily being used to gain access to geoblocked video content as well music services like those offered by Swedish company Spotify AB or Oakland, Calif. company Pandora Media, Inc. He said consumers are also using VPN services for e-commerce to purchase products online that are limited to people living in the United States. Using a VPN, a user can purchase the product, ship it, and circumvent network geographic limitations, he said. Bullock said the VPN services were first intended to provide online users with data security and privacy on unencrypted networks such as WiFi, and that cross-border accessibility emerged as a type of “side benefit.” “I don’t know if we consider it a good thing that VPNs are getting a reputation of just being able to access content across borders,” Bullock said. He said he hopes people use WiTopia's VPN service for its intended purpose and not just for added accessibility. “It will be one more thing that people will see as something they need, to go on the Internet safely, securely and privately,” he said. Parsons said he expects use of VPN services to continue to grow until companies start to put more effort into restraining access to content. Roks said geoblocking will “keep honest people honest and the people who get around it will always get around it.” He said encrypted signals are not easy to crack and that there would be a cost to putting an effort into trying to stop VPN services. Rights holders would have to decide whether it's worth it, Roks said. “The concept of licensing regionally, in a medium that pays no attention to location, is itself absurd, but that is an inherent dilemma of the Internet,” Roks said. “It's been stuck in that world for a long time, and will stay that way because that is how media is currently funded, on a regional level.” news@thewirereport.ca

More consumers turning to VPN services to access geoblocked video content

Broadcast | August 24, 2012

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More consumers turning to VPN services to access geoblocked video content

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