According to a survey carried by OnePoll on behalf of privacy advice and comparison website, Comparitech.com, almost half (48%) of the respondents that said they currently used Netflix claimed that they would pay a premium to be able to access content that is normally restricted to the US audience. A further 43% of those who used Netflix said that they felt it was wrong for Netflix to ban VPNs in order for customers to access US restricted content.
“While Netflix did recently push up its prices, there was no extra benefit to the customer. Instead, if users were willing to pay a premium to access more content, Netflix could use this extra capital to negotiate better deals with licensing agencies to offer a better service to its customers rather than put its customers privacy at risk with this unpopular VPN ban,” said Paul Bischoff from Comparitech.com.
This lockdown has meant Netflix has come under fire from consumers angry about its decision to block VPN connections from accessing content out of uncertainty of where the traffic is coming from – Netflix content varies across different regions, so VPNs can be used to get around regional content blocking in order for users to watch whatever they want. NordVPN even surmised that this is the reason for Netflix’s subscriber growth taking a hit and share prices going down.
The findings bring into question whether the uproar about VPN blocking is actually necessary given there is a clear market for people willing to pay extra to Netflix to get the content they want to see.
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