Netflix Launches Kiwi Crackdown

New Zealanders accessing the American version of Netflix through VPNs and proxies have been shut out overnight.

University student Stewart Sowman-Lund said he had lost his access to the US catalogue of Netflix through a virtual private network (VPN) last night.

Another New Zealand Twitter user shared a similar problem. The person behind the HardWired Twitter account said they would be using torrents to download content they wanted to watch, rather than pay for the New Zealand Netflix subscription.

Kiwi Reddit users shared experiences of logging in to American Netflix through VPNs and being met with an error message.

"I've had a couple of on screen messages to the effect of 'it looks like you're using a vpn etc.', but I just refresh or change the server and it works. Watching US Netflix at the moment," one user said.

Another user said they changed their VPN from the US to Canada and the service worked again.

Netflix announced earlier this month it would be cracking down on users accessing geo-blocked content, and this week the company made good on their promise.

Read the full story at NZ Herald