Another blow against geoblocking

The Herald reports:

Slingshot has just made it a lot easier for its customers to access television and movie streaming websites like Netflix and BBC iPlayer that are normally blocked to this country’s internet users.

For the past 12 months Slingshot has offered a service called Global Mode, letting households with international visitors sign up and have access to websites such as Netflix which are blocked in some parts of the world.

The service was seen by some as a ruse, allowing New Zealanders to access these websites simply by telling their internet company they had a cousin from Minneapolis staying with them.

Slingshot, the country’s third-biggest internet company, is now unblocking about two dozen international sites for all of its customers to access. They won’t need to claim they are playing host to overseas visitors.

“No beating around the bush. This is to watch Netflix, this is to watch BBC iPlayer, this is to watch Hulu, this is to watch Amazon Prime,” Slingshot general manager Taryn Hamilton told the Herald.

Superb. The WWW is global. Geo-blocking is not compatible with it. Business models that rely on geo-blocking will fail. Think of the planet as one big hungry for content global market, and go sell to it.