# The legality of using VPN to watch legal streamed series from other countries?



## Saiyan Lusitano (Apr 17, 2017)

How does this work, is it still fully legal to watch other countries' whom restrict IP per country or becomes grey area/illegal?


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## TotalInsanity4 (Apr 17, 2017)

Fairly certain it's 100% legal, but I'm not a lawyer


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## RevPokemon (Apr 17, 2017)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo-blocking#Legality_of_circumvention_for_online_video
I am going either illegal or at the least will be a EULA/TOS violation


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## the_randomizer (Apr 17, 2017)

RevPokemon said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo-blocking#Legality_of_circumvention_for_online_video
> I am going either illegal or at the least will be a EULA/TOS violation



No one's ever been sued in court for a EULA/TOS violation, just saying. in case people are fearing that could happen.


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## Kioku_Dreams (Apr 17, 2017)

Definitely a violation of the EULA/TOS. Shouldn't be illegal, as that wouldn't make sense.


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## Plstic (Apr 17, 2017)

Very much grey area. Because technically, the shows and movies are not licensed to show in other countries or they are licensed to other platforms.


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## RevPokemon (Apr 17, 2017)

the_randomizer said:


> No one's ever been sued in court for a EULA/TOS violation, just saying. in case people are fearing that could happen.


True but still the consequences can be a PIA for TOS violations depending on the service.


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## nooby89 (Apr 17, 2017)

Personally, I watch TV series streamed from other countries without VPN. Is it risky?


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## Plstic (Apr 17, 2017)

nooby89 said:


> Personally, I watch TV series streamed from other countries without VPN. Is it risky?


No but it is illegal if you're not paying for a subscription and using those shitty streaming sites.


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## the_randomizer (Apr 17, 2017)

RevPokemon said:


> True but still the consequences can be a PIA for TOS violations depending on the service.



No idea what a PIA is, but there's no need for people to be worried about it all the same.


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## Saiyan Lusitano (Apr 17, 2017)

Plstic said:


> No but it is illegal if you're not paying for a subscription and using those shitty streaming sites.


CBC offers free streams of their TV series so those who want to watch it and are situated outside Canada have to use a VPN. So it's legal but it really isn't.


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## RevPokemon (Apr 17, 2017)

the_randomizer said:


> No idea what a PIA is, but there's no need for people to be worried about it all the same.


pain in the ass.



Saiyan Lusitano said:


> CBC offers free streams of their TV series so those who want to watch it and are situated outside Canada have to use a VPN. So it's legal but it really isn't.


Also I remember one big example is in the Netherlands the American NFL streams games online for free (IIRC)


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## Tomy Sakazaki (Apr 17, 2017)

Not illegal, worst case scenario the subscription service may terminate your contract unilaterally after sending you warnings about the use of VPN with their services breaking the TOS/EULA.
The ones who may get sued or pay to content owners/local distributors extra because users are using VPN are the streaming services themselves.

EDIT: Except in some countries where using VPN or other ways to access internet content from outside government controlled networks is actually illegal and a crime per se.


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## FAST6191 (Apr 17, 2017)

On the face of it the only one at fault would be the distribution service for stepping outside the bounds of their distribution agreements (be it from another or because they sold off other regions to others), though I would be surprised if they did not have some kind of contractual immunity from any troubles there as long as they blocked your basic proxy and made token efforts otherwise.

That said there is a fair bit of law with regards to using services via deception and without permission and it is an active step you have taken to bypass restrictions, something which would likely not help your case if you ended up in front of a judge. Whether a EULA could transfer it onto you further ("by using this service you state you are within the borders of [country] and if not you are then accessing the content without permission" sort of thing) I am not sure about. To that end there is probably a means for a clever lawyer to argue something.

As others said it would likely be grounds to boot you from the service and I don't see you really having a leg to stand on there, give or take a quirk of law like some statute somewhere saying technically for these purposes it is one country (you see it sometimes in commonwealth countries for certain things, despite most countries within it having complete or near complete independence from each other and a central authority).

What might be worth looking into is whatever happened to the old Russian MP3 sites (mp3search.ru, allofmp3 and such like). Their contention was as they paid ROMS (the then Russian equivalent of the RIAA, and yes there was much amusement over the name in places like this) royalties they could legally sell a very wide selection of music (the sorts of things itunes shouts from the rooftops when it gets (things like the Beatles music) they had for years prior) to all and sundry, and often for a lot less and even in better quality (some had flac years before itunes even offered unencrypted music). I never saw any court cases for end users getting pinched, and the music companies in the west did the usual way of try to stop any payments from going there.

That said people don't seem to care so much about people sharing netlix/amazon/hbo/spotify/whatever passwords, and that probably represents a real and tangible loss of some form.


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## the_randomizer (Apr 17, 2017)

RevPokemon said:


> pain in the ass.
> 
> 
> Also I remember one big example is in the Netherlands the American NFL streams games online for free (IIRC)



I thought it was "PITA" but I digress. I don't think they're gonna get sued for circumventing stupid regional restrictions.


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## Armadillo (Apr 17, 2017)

Meh. Just digital importing. Just the digital version of importing a blu-ray/game whatever from another region.


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