It is not illegal to use a VPN to stream geo restricted content

VPN
1

For some reason, there are multiple people in this sub dedicated to spreading this falsehood that it’s illegal to use a VPN to bypass geo-restricted content. This is false.

There are only a few countries that have laws about VPNs: China, Belarus, Russia, North Korea, Iraq, Uganda, Turkmenistan, Turkey, UAE, Oman

In all other countries, use of a VPN is legal. Bypassing geo-restrictions is against the Terms of Service of most streaming sites, but violating a TOS is not an illegal act. At most, it means they could terminate your account if they caught you doing it, but this never happens.

It seems to me that the people spreading this rumour want to justify their pirating the show. In my opinion, there’s no need to justify that. Four years ago I wasn’t in a financial position to pay for Discovery, so I downloaded episodes. Now I am in a position to pay for it, and I do so (and the quality is much better as a plus). But whatever your reasoning, in my opinion piracy is not an enormous moral issue (and is even legal in several countries) and is ultimately your own business.

But what you shouldn’t do is spread misinformation in an attempt to justify your piracy, and discourage interested parties from buying it themselves in the process.

If you are outside the US and are interested in paying for the show so you can watch it as it airs, there’s one guide here for YouTube/google video.

I also believe you can access it on Amazon.com Prime Video with a VPN, either by buying the season VOD, or paying for a Discovery+ subscription, which is offered as an add-on for Prime Video. You might be able to get a free trial of US Prime - I often buy stuff using Amazon UK with an Amazon US account (Amazon accounts work worldwide except on Amazon Japan) and I am constantly offered a free month trial of Amazon Prime UK, even logging in with my US account and paying with a US card.

Another way of supporting the show is becoming a supporter on facebook which is $5 a month.

Anyway, no matter your method of watching the upcoming season, all the best to you, and get hyped because it’s motherfucking ROBOT FIGHTING TIME :robot::boxing_glove::robot:

2

Although I would be cautious to recommend people to use VPN THEN pay for geo-blocked contents on Youtube, as it would most likely be a violation of Youtube’s ToS.

If Google would be keen to enforce the geo-blocking much more strictly in future, you could be taken away your right (which you don’t really own, ironically) to access the contents you purchased any time, or even get your account suspended in the worst case, albeit much less likely scenario.

3

The sad thing is, I genuinely believe it is quicker and easier for me in the UK to buy and watch the show than it is for a comparable person in the US doing it via TV.

It takes me about 20 seconds to go from “I want to buy this series” to “I am watching this series”. At worst it’d take 2 minutes given a new computer that didn’t have my settings already loaded in.

If you didn’t have Discovery already, it’s going to be at best just as quick - likely slower if you wanted to actually watch it on TV (last time I bought a TV package, it wasn’t instantly available).

Only real notable downside for me is I watch it next day. But then I’d likely not be awake for most airings anyway.

4

I want to pay for the show, not some shitty vpn just to be able to pay for the show

5

and I do so (and the quality is much better as a plus)

I’m quite interested to see some information backing this one up.

Generally speaking, TV “piracy” results in the outright best product. You get the original broadcast video quality (or something indistinguishable from it), and absolutely nothing else.

  • No advertising at all.
  • No requirement to play it through any particular player application (or worse, through a website), and therefore you can play all your media through a single application of your choice on any device and OS.
  • No requirement to be online, ever.
  • And you get it forever - no company going out of business, or restructuring, or contractual dispute, or sale of license, will ever result in your loss of a file.

I’d love to pay for a service that ticks all those boxes at once. The only large scale paid service I’ve ever encountered that came close was Sony’s music site bandit.fm, which they shut down many years ago.

6

In my experience, if you buy it from Amazon then you don’t even need to use a VPN. I’ve watched seasons 4-6 that way on both the UK and Germany without using a VPN at any point.

7

Downloading via torrent isn’t illegal either - only you allowing others to download from you is illegal. If they wanted your money, they wouldn’t make it so hard to give it to them.

8

The U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has been used to prosecute people who’s crime was to violate a service’s terms of service. If your access doesn’t comply with the TOS, the argument goes, then your access is unauthorized and therefore an illegal abuse of the service’s computers. Aaron Swartz being the most well known example. I don’t think they have yet taken it all the way to a trial, though,

I don’t know what similar laws in other countries could be (ab)used in this manner.

9

For some reason, there are multiple people in this sub dedicated to spreading this falsehood that it’s illegal to use a VPN to bypass geo-restricted content. This is false.

In which countries is using VPNs to bypass geo-restricted content legal? All countries where VPNs are legal?

10

Are you are a lawyer specialising in copyright law? Because that’s a very definitive statement.

Various large organizations, notably Sony, have contended that bypassing a geoblock with a VPN is a violation of copyright law. The reasoning being that the content is not licenced for access in the location you are accessing it and that you accessing it affects region specific licensing deals they may want to make.

Are you going to get prosecuted for it? No. But nobody’s getting prosecuted for watching a Battlebots torrent either.

11

There are many free VPNs.

Hell, if you buy the show via YouTube - you only need a 1 time VPN. After you purchase the series, it is freely available wherever you are in the world without geo restrictions.

Some browsers nowadays even come with built in VPNs that require no personal data from you to use. Can easily just use that to buy the series, then never use it again.

12

Information is my eyes lol.

Broadcast or streaming video is transmitted as lossy video, then recorded by people making the rip, and usually reencoded into another lossy format so by definition quality is lost and it is not indistinguishable from broadcast. If the content is on a service like Amazon or iTunes and the people making the rip have the ability to actually make a direct download, or web-dl, then the quality would be identical. However, in my experience with battlebots the versions I’ve seen on torrents have been webrips captured from Discovery’s free streaming site (which already has a low bitrate) and are not great quality. They’re watchable obviously, but they are fairly compressed and not comparable to bluray.

I pay for the Discovery+ addon for Amazon Video when Battlebots is airing and it is noticeably better quality than the old 1080p web versions I used to download. No pixellation or blockiness, basically pristine quality and more detail.

13

Interesting, I didn’t know that. So you go to Amazon US, buy the VOD and you can just watch it? It makes sense for VOD. Does it also appear in your U.K./German account/website or do you have to stay on Amazon US? As in, would it also show on your content on a prime app on a smart tv or stick or do you have to watch it on Amazon.com

Assuming as it’s amazon you probably don’t even need to fake a billing address or buy gift cards? Can you just buy it with whatever credit card you normally use?

14

This sounds like a myth. Maybe there’s some select countries where it’s legal to download but not upload, but for most places (including the UK) copyright laws restrict downloading and uploading copyrighted material, there’s not some weird get out of jail free card if you can claim your router sucked it down but never spat it back up.

I don’t think you fully read my post because again, I’m not interested in your reasons for piracy or judging you for it. I’m merely asking people to stop spreading misinformation about buying the show with a VPN (or about redditor discovers FREE TRICK that makes piracy legal! Discovery HATES him!).

EDIT: the fact that this factually incorrect comment is the most upvoted one shows that people really do just want to justify not paying for the show lol

15

I think you are confusing the notion that torrenting is legal as a platform, but not legal once you are using it to download or share copyrighted content with the idea that downloading anything on torrents as long as you don’t upload is legal. This is a myth that dates back to fairly early internet.

16

What does Aaron Swartz have to do with violating a TOS? That case was typical US government bullshit, obviously, but he broke into a computer closet, connected to the MIT network, and downloaded millions of JSTOR articles with the intent to share them. That’s not even remotely comparable to someone paying for online content and bypassing geo-restrictions on it to access it.

17

Unless someone knows of a country with laws specifically aimed at making bypassing geo restrictions illegal, then yes, you can safely assume it’s legal in all countries. You can always ask google if using a VPN to stream video is legal in your country. There’s usually plenty of articles on that topic.

18

The problem is, free VPNs aren’t good, and good VPNs aren’t free. This is one of those situations where you definitely get what you pay for.

19

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct. But I suspect there might be some subconscious bias involved. I wouldn’t mind seeing some side by side comparisons.

Bluray is superior, of course, but that’s not comparing apples to apples.

20

If the stream and the reencoded web rip were put side by side (ripped by someone who knows how to encode video properly), I imagine it would be hard to reliably tell which is which.