Sky and copyright and Netflix

Eric Crampton blogs:

It seems that the lawyers at Sky didn't like my post on Netflix. They've not been in touch with me about it, nor did they get in touch with the folks at SciBlogs about it when I syndicated it there.

But late last week, the National Business asked if they could run it as part of their Weekend Edition. agreed, as I always do. Shortly after it went up at NBR, I received an email from NBR's Head of Digital saying that they'd had to pull the piece after a legal threat from Sky TV. Sky's lawyer wanted excised from the article the instructions on how to access Netflix from New Zealand. In my piece, I linked to an Australian website providing instructions on how to access Netflix. I also included a postscript noting that Hola seemed to work very well.

So it is there anything wrong with telling people how to get around geoblocking?

First, note that New Zealand generally allows “parallel importation”. The New Zealand Government, in general, does not think that it is its job to enforce whatever exclusive dealing arrangements that some overseas manufacturer wants to enter into with a domestic distributor. There is a minor exemption on DVDs and films where you cannot import films for commercial distribution for a period of five months from the date that the film is first made available to the public. This lets the theatres get a run where international windowing delays release here relative to the US. However, the ban specifically allows import of legitimate copies for personal non-commercial use. It would be reasonable to read accessing Netflix for personal use as falling into this category, though note that I am not a lawyer. I discussed the temporary ban here. …

But, by my read of 226b, the variety of mechanisms described at this Australian site simply work to circumvent a system controlling geographic market segmentation by preventing playback in New Zealand of a non-infringing copy of a work. Netflix's catalogue of films and TV shows in the US is non-infringing in exactly the same way that a DVD on sale in the US is non-infringing. And buying a DVD there, bringing it here, and watching it on a region-free DVD player should be as protected as subscribing to Netflix via something like Hola or Unblock-us. Maybe it violates the Netflix terms of service in the US, and Netflix could be justified in cancelling somebody's account if they deemed such use to be in violation of their Terms of Service. I expect that bringing a Region 1 DVD here and watching it on a region-free player might violate the DVD's Terms of Service as well. But a take-down notice based simply on the use of the word Hola or a simple description stating that installing Hola was really easy? Again, I'm not a lawyer; hopefully I won't have to consult one. I'll rattle a tip-jar if I do and if it winds up being at all pricey.

Getting around geoblocking actually allows you to pay for a copyrighted work. I think we should resist all geoblocking. If you want less piracy, then allow us to buy the content we want.

Any lawyers have a view on whether Eric's original blog post does fall foul of the Copyright Act?

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