I Beat Netflix’s Password Sharing Crackdown

[maplepants]

I wonder how good Netflix is at deciding where you are. I live in a pretty dense part of Germany, but in a small village. Right now my IP is from 200km away. Sometimes it's from a city about 20km away. My ISP gives me a new IP every day at 3:00am, and they could really be anywhere from Darmstadt to Dortmund. I am skeptical that Netflix would be able to tell the difference between my and somebody who lives close by.

[Middcore]

17 hours ago, Bitter said:

Isn't this piracy like blocking ads?

 

It has been 

00

days since someone disingenuously complained about Linus's ad-blocking comments

 

[Ducazor]

this could be used to connect a phone then to do a hotspot to a laptop for the laptop to have the address from where you set it?  

[Valentin17]

I have one PC on my network with Netflix account activated.

I am using OpenVPN server with Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS setup as a VM inside Proxmox.

Can i use this so all my outside PCs can connect to my network and from there watch Netflix?

 

Thanks. ;D

[Bitter]

4 hours ago, Middcore said:

 

It has been 

00

days since someone disingenuously complained about Linus's ad-blocking comments

 

And we'll keep beating this dead high horse he's riding. It's ok when it's not affecting him.

[Razercake]

24 minutes ago, Bitter said:

And we'll keep beating this dead high horse he's riding. It's ok when it's not affecting him.

Would love to know what high horse you are referring to, cause in regards to piracy I don't see what you mean.

[Bitter]

8 minutes ago, Razercake said:

Would love to know what high horse you are referring to, cause in regards to piracy I don't see what you mean.

Blocking ads = piracy

Circumventing account sharing != piracy

There's plenty of other examples of instances where LMG has published tutorials about what's essentially piracy or outright is piracy but it's ok because unlike blocking ads it doesn't potentially affect their cash flow. Also lots of content made by LMG and posted here would result in a violation of the community guidelines if they were applied equally to LMG as they were to normal users. Their house, their rules, but unequally applied rules none the less. Rubs me the wrong way and I enjoy pointing it out whenever I have the easy opportunity for a drive-by comment.

[Razercake]

12 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Blocking ads = piracy

Circumventing account sharing != piracy

There's plenty of other examples of instances where LMG has published tutorials about what's essentially piracy or outright is piracy but it's ok because unlike blocking ads it doesn't potentially affect their cash flow. Also lots of content made by LMG and posted here would result in a violation of the community guidelines if they were applied equally to LMG as they were to normal users. Their house, their rules, but unequally applied rules none the less. Rubs me the wrong way and I enjoy pointing it out whenever I have the easy opportunity for a drive-by comment.

Its surprising to me that this many people lack the ability to understand the simple nuance of this...

 

he isn't telling you to not block ads. all he is saying is don't pretend it isn't piracy, you are circumventing the ads which is the "payment" for watching the video. you can agree or not with his reasoning, but there is no double standards or unequally applied rules. hell they've shown how to block ads, as an example I can say pirating games is piracy, doesn't mean I don't do it or am telling others not to.

 

one doesn't negate the other...

[wanderingfool2]

While I do like videos showing examples like this, I think there are a few things lacking here.

 

Generally the talk about how Tailscale establishes and encrypts their VPN connections (looking it up, seems like they rely on the udp hole punching to establish the p2p connection along with essentially relays when things fail).  I didn't look too much into it, but it seems each node keeps the encrypted password so in theory it should be pretty good at warding out ease droppers even if Tailscale was compromised (but I didnt look too closely in how the initial communication occurs if they can force an unencrypted VPN connection).

 

Now the big thing that was lacking in the video, the warning of legal ramifications of what they are suggesting.  While password sharing is borderline copyright infringement (and things like emulators or plex servers live in a very grey area), creating a VPN for family/friends to utilize Netflix on I think falls directly into copyright infringement and more importantly it creates a willful distribution of copyrighted material.

 

This point I think gets a bit more serious in that we don't know what information Netflix's app is actually gathering.  If they detect that you are using a VPN like suggested, and if copyright holders request that information from Netflix there could be a lot more of an open and shut case...(with the min. being $750 per movie).

[Middcore]

1 hour ago, Razercake said:

Its surprising to me that this many people lack the ability to understand the simple nuance of this...

 

he isn't telling you to not block ads. all he is saying is don't pretend it isn't piracy, you are circumventing the ads which is the "payment" for watching the video. you can agree or not with his reasoning, but there is no double standards or unequally applied rules. hell they've shown how to block ads, as an example I can say pirating games is piracy, doesn't mean I don't do it or am telling others not to.

 

one doesn't negate the other...

Most of the people butthurt about it also pirate moves and TV and such shamelessly all the time, but when Linus suggests something else they do is piracy they take it as a grave insult. 

[dogwitch]

2 hours ago, Razercake said:

Its surprising to me that this many people lack the ability to understand the simple nuance of this...

 

 

by god people now... cant even understand context anymore... am not shock or suprise now.

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, Razercake said:

Its surprising to me that this many people lack the ability to understand the simple nuance of this...

And its surprising people are still insisting there is any sort of "nuance" to this when they'll tell you ad blocking is bad and you're a bad person for using an ad blocker, simply for profit reasons over the morals of ads being a security risk, especially the google search malware ads. Its ironic too as LTT even has a video telling you how to block ads.

1 hour ago, Middcore said:

Most of the people butthurt about it also pirate moves and TV and such shamelessly all the time, but when Linus suggests something else they do is piracy they take it as a grave insult. 

People took it as an insult because Linus purposely made it insulting, doubling and tripling down on their bad take, even making merch over such a silly thing. And now telling how to bypass Netflix password sharing, what people should do IMO is cancel their subscription and find an alternative.

[Razercake]

10 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

And its surprising people are still insisting there is any sort of "nuance" to this when they'll tell you ad blocking is bad and you're a bad person for using an ad blocker

I'd love for you to supply me with that quote, cause I have no idea where its coming from. unless you are talking about just people in general, cause I don't recall LTT saying anything about "using AdBlock makes you a bad person".

 

10 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

simply for profit reasons over the morals of ads being a security risk, especially the google search malware ads. Its ironic too as LTT even has a video telling you how to block ads.

I use adblocker, was never cause of security. most people I know don't do it cause of security. they do it cause they don't want to waste their time watching ads when they can download an extension to remove it.

 

there are plenty of reasons to use AdBlock or to pirate something, that was never in question.

 

[TheIndieArmy]

The guide is great, but kind of leaves you in the dark on how to get it working for popular Netflix devices. Most people don't watch Netflix on a laptop or PC. How do I get my Xbox, TV, Fire Stick, etc. hooked up to the Tailscale VPN? Does Tailscale work with subnet routers? If so, seems like a major feature to leave out of such a video to get devices you can't install Tailscale working with the VPN.