Just ‘Lost’ without a Netflix IP Address

Last updated on September 3rd, 2024 at 01:38 pm

Would it be fair to say, that people become more relaxed and accepting of life’s little obstacles as you get older? I think maybe it is, the angry young man turns into something a little bit calmer and relaxed. After all if you’ve survived a few decades you’ve inevitably learn a thing or two – never buy anything from your doorstep or if something’s free then there’s inevitably a catch somewhere.

For me personally, I can accept most little setbacks relatively easily – after all I know they don’t just happen to me and there isn’t much I can do about them. Yet again, utter annoyance and frustration is always there bubbling under the surface. It arose the other week when I and my good lady settled down for an evening’s TV watching , our chosen series the Science Fiction show Lost. Now every body else seems to have watched this about ten years ago, but we’ve only just found it.

Finding the Right Netflix IP Range Address

However when we signed on to Netflix to watch episode 54 out of 70 something, I couldn’t find it. It had completely disappeared from the Netflix subscription, not a word or a warning for those of us who had spent the last few weeks ploughing through this confusing box set. After some internet sleuthing I discovered that it had been removed but only from certain regional variations of Netflix including the UK one I was using. It seemed I had the wrong Netflix IP address, typical.

However it still remained on others including the US version which seems to have much more than the UK version of Netflix. Anyway the cross part soon receded and problem solving was the order of the day – here’s the solution I found in this video, how to spoof ip address to watch Netflix.

It’s actually quite straight forward, to switch between the different versions of Netflix you just need to change your IP address to match the country you need. So for the Canadian version you need a Canadian IP address, for the US one you need a US based address and so on. You can’t actually change your own IP address but you can bounce your connection off something called a VPN server and have a Netflix IP address which obscures your real address from view.

I suppose you could call it Netflix by proxy watching with the help of a third party. So in the video they make a connection to a US based VPN server, which then routes you to the US version of Netflix. It works just as promised and ‘Lost’ is there happily sitting in the US Netflix movie list!

However before you go looking for a super cheap VPN, there’s something you should know about the specific Netflix addresses. Unfortunately although many people switch netflix domains it’s not something the company like and they take a lot of effort in blocking these VPN servers. In reality only about 5% VPN companies have a valid Netflix ip address list, because the company also blocks ‘commercial’ ip addresses. These are addresses which are tagged from a commercial source which most VPN services are from.

Certainly the move has been welcomed by IT departments across the world. No longer do they have to wonder how to block Netflix at work to stop people flooding their network with video. This is because most corporate networks run on commercial based IP addresses which won’t work anymore, so Netflix have effectively saved them a job!

The solution, which you should check with the provider, is to have a ‘residential IP address’ assigned to the VPNs, without this your netflix ip address change will be pointless – it won’t work. It’s the reason why Netflix won’t be accessible from most corporate networks either, a relief for many network administrators who were learning how to block netflix on firewall or external routers. Of course, many administrators have already installed rules to block Netflix IP range too and most content filters have an updated black list of Netflix servers. They are the only company who have done this and it’s been extremely effective, fully expect others to follow suit.

It’s a developing situation though, digital products like Netflix subscription change depending on where you are. Netflix is better than most though because at least your subscription is normally accessible – if you pay for a UK TV license you’ll lose access to all their channels the moment you step outside the UK. Unless of course you invest in a British address that allows you access from anywhere!

Anyway here’s the VPN service which I use – it includes residential IP address ranges that work and are on the approved netflix ip address list.

Try the trial first to see for yourself – 10 Day Trial of Identity Cloaker.

Morality in the Digital World

I was talking to a lay preacher the other day, I’ll leave out the particular denomination as that’s not the point of the story. Anyway we were talking about football and related stuff in particular the cost of actually watching out favorite Premiership teams on the TV.

It’s something I have given up the escalating costs of being able to watch football on the TV had started to become a little bit hard to justify for me. My subscription costs to various TV and satellite services was getting close to £100 ($80) a month which is an awful lot of money to pay just for watching a few games of football on the TV. So I bit the bullet and cancelled the lot which was surprisingly less painful than I thought.

It turns out you can listen on the radio for free and watch highlights after the game on TV too, for those ‘must see’ matches there’s always a bar somewhere you can go and watch it on. So for me, it wasn’t a big deal and certainly not worth all the money I was paying out every month. However my preacher friend had a similar thought but ended up taking a different, slightly surprising route than I did.

What he did was buy a media streamer pre-installed with something called Kodi, which is an open source video player which started it’s life on the Xbox. The interesting thing about Kodi however is that supports hundreds of add-ons which can effectively stream copyrighted material directly from the internet. So you can buy a box with Kodi pre-installed and configured which allows access to all of Sky, Virgin and BT’s subscription channels absolutely free.

I have to say I was shocked, a very religious and moral man was effectively stealing these channels without paying for them. It was hardly crime of the century but I wondered if he had considered that it even was theft? It turns out that he didn’t, or at least conveniently pretended he didn’t understand it was theft. After all he’d bought the media box and was simply using it’s facilities to download the programmes that he used to pay for.

This is our world, the digital world where perhaps our morales can be a little more elastic than in the real world. After all would my friend break in to an electronics shop and steal a Sky box, or mug a passer by for money to pay the subscription? Of course he never would even consider doing this. Yet literally millions of law abiding people are using this and similar methods everywhere to download things that they haven’t bought. It doesn’t stop here of course, if there’s a line where is it drawn – is the ex-pat using a VPN to watch iPlayer in Australia a criminal too? It’s much too simple to just consider that theft just involves physical objects – my preacher friend was effectively defrauding SKY of hundreds of pounds a year.

I guess it’s a very subjective issue, copyright infringement could be thought of as a criminal offence or just blurring the rules slightly. It would be harsh to consider all those people who miss British TV and want to watch BBC iPlayer in Ireland or use a Proxy for Netflix access as hard core criminals but it’s easier perhaps to convince yourself no crime is being committed. I think though it’s worth considering the legal and practical implications of finding yourself in court for ‘digital fraud’ or ‘obtaining goods and services by deception’ before using these extremely tempting technical options!

The Dangers of Digital Law

Last updated on September 3rd, 2024 at 01:25 pm

What is Digital Law?

Laws are in general supposed to make us safer and more secure, I think most of us would agree. However there are areas where this is not the primary concern and even some where the opposite is true. This is almost certainly the case in one of the older digital based laws created in the US called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) better known as the DCMA Act.

It sounds safe enough at first glance but there’s a huge flaw at the very heart of this legislation which could seriously undermine the safety of the internet. It sounds rather dramatic but it’s certainly a possibility with the increasing reach of devices connected to the internet – particularly the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) . The problem is that all of these devices from smart phones through TVs to toasters and fridges all contain software embedded in them in order to communicate across the internet. Software of course often contains bugs and flaws which can constitute a security risk, in fact there have been many reports of these ‘smart devices’ being used in DDoS attacks.

That’s where the problem lies with the DCMA Act, which contains a law stating that flaws in these devices cannot be disclosed without express permission from the manufacturer of the device. Consider the issue, a security researcher or ethical hacker discovers a security flaw in a device, they cannot release this information legally and the manufacturer is unlikely to want to publish it’s own security problems. What happens is that the flaws remain and don’t get fixed, and almost certainly then get exploited by computer hackers.

DCMA Act

In fact there are situations where DCMA makes it not only illegal to disclose a software fault but also to fix it. There have been test cases, most famously brought by John Deere tractors where it has been stated that it is illegal for owners to attempt to fix their tractors instead being forced to return them to dealers instead. This is because the tractors like most equipment now contain a certain amount of software which control the devices bringing them into the remit of the act.

It’s of considerable concern to all of us, the devices we have bought are not really our property and the issue is extending to all sorts of situations. We can’t use third party disks or cartridges in printers and game consoles because the manufacturer controls the software and access to that device even after we’ve bought it. With digital services it’s even more extreme with media giants like Netflix enforcing blocks on proxies and VPNs as described in this article – The Great Netflix VPN Ban.

It’s a dream come to true for the manufacturers who are able to implement specific profit maximizing business models which are extremely restrictive to the end owners. Control of the device is effectively kept with people who created it not with the people who bought it. Don’t think you can do what you like with that HP printer, because you can’t the law says so!

Summary of the DCMA Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), enacted in 1998, is a significant piece of legislation in the United States that addresses copyright issues in the digital environment. It aims to update copyright law for the internet age by providing tools for copyright owners to protect their works online while also balancing the rights of users and internet service providers (ISPs). The DMCA includes provisions that make it illegal to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technologies and establishes a “safe harbor” for ISPs, protecting them from liability for copyright infringement committed by their users, provided they follow specific procedures for handling takedown notices. The act has played a crucial role in shaping how copyright is enforced on the internet and has influenced global copyright law discussions.

biocomplexity

Last updated on July 23rd, 2017 at 10:02 am

Biocomplexity Project Overview:

“Biocomplexity in Linked Bioecological-Human Systems: Agent-Based Models of Land-Use Decisions and Emergent Land Use Patterns in Forested Regions of the American Midwest and the Brazilian Amazon”

Proposal Abstract

In January 2001, a group of CIPEC researchers and affiliates began work on a new five-year project funded under the National Science Foundation Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative. Building from a pilot model developed at CIPEC before the grant’s inception, the research team has developed a preliminary blueprint for this major research endeavor.

Project participants represent a wide variety of disciplines and prior research experiences. Several new collaborators have expanded the range of disciplines represented at CIPEC.

There have been several historical approaches to land-use modeling:

Econometric models facilitate statistically rigorous hypothesis tests, but are not well suited to modeling non-linear dynamics or for generalizing beyond the original data.
Systems dynamic models successfully represent aggregate dynamic interactions, but these models are often based on stylized assumptions for purposes of analytical tractability, and they can quickly become intractable when used to represent small-scale interactions.
Cellular automata models successfully represent small-scale interactions and neighborhood effects, but are often based on static transition probabilities, rather than on dynamic representations of individual behavior.
Theoretical agent-based models can provide a qualitative description of landscape evolution, but to date, these models generally rely on stylized heuristic decision rules not derived from empirical investigation.

Our project takes a dual methodological approach to modeling. Our primary focus is on the development of an innovative empirically parameterized and validated agent-based model of land-use change. This modeling effort will be complemented by the development of a series of econometric models. We plan to compare the strengths, weaknesses, and unique advantages of each modeling approach, thus placing the new empirical agent-based model in a comparative historical context. We also will take advantage of complementarities between the two modeling efforts by allowing the econometric models to inform development of the agent-based models. We have the advantage of being able to draw on rich historical data assigned by IP address for Indiana and Brazil, developed by other CIPEC researchers and affiliates, for both models.

The project proposes development of two agent-based models: LUCIM for south-central Indiana, and LUCITA for the Brazilian Amazon. This narrative focuses on the development of LUCIM; our colleague at the University of Waterloo, Peter Deadman, is overseeing development of LUCITA.

Agent-based models of human landscapes generally share some basic characteristics. In these models, decision-making agents are represented as individual programming objects that translate external and internal information into decisions about land use or spatial mobility. Agents are linked through a spatial landscape structure and nested institutional and biophysical structures. Individual agents make decisions based on heterogeneous and potentially dynamic local environments, and the cumulation of these individual decisions drive the evolutionary dynamics of the landscape system.

While developing the grant proposal and in these first few months of project planning, the group has had extensive discussions regarding justifications for agent-based models of land-use change. We have identified several unique strengths of agent-based models:

The model can serve as a simulated social laboratory. In cases where analytical exploration is intractable, the model can be used to analyze the relationship between model parameters and model outcomes and to derive empirically testable hypotheses.
Feedbacks between socioeconomic and biophysical processes can be explicitly modeled, making these models particularly appropriate for biocomplexity research.
The model can be constructed to match the scale and structure of the available spatial data, or using cloaked ip address to maintain confidentiality.

Agent-based models can explicitly represent landscape sources of social and biophysical complexity. We have identified three key sources of complexity in landscape systems:
Interdependencies, such as flows of information between agents and ecological edge effects.
Spatial heterogeneity, such as variations in agent experience and preferences and in topography — a key influence on land-use patterns in south-central Poland.
Hierarchical or nested structures, such as political administrative units and watershed components. These influences imply that an individual agent or parcel is likely influenced by processes occurring at multiple spatial scales.
We have developed a list of key questions to guide model development:
How do individuals make labor allocation, production, consumption, and investment decisions in risky, multi-asset environments?
What factors affect individual preferences and actions related to land use?
What is the impact of landowner actions on the landscape?
How do socioeconomic landscape patterns and ecological landscape patterns interact?
How does a change in land use in one location influence the probability of a change in land use at a neighboring location?
What is the role of scale in the observed changes in land use in southern Indiana?
What are some key ways of testing our theoretical models? How do initial assumptions impact model outcomes? Can differing assumptions lead to observationally equivalent outcomes?

We have developed a modular model structure and have formed overlapping sub-groups to work on module development.
Because of the innovative empirical focus of our agent-based model, it will be very important to assess the empirical validity of our agent specification. We plan a variety of strategies to both parameterize the agent decision model and test the validity of our agent decision-making specifications.

We have begun an extensive review of the academic literature from multiple disciplines on the determinants of landowner decision making.
We are able to draw on results from a survey of 250 Monroe county landowners completed by the CIPEC Indiana project, and we plan additional interviews with local stakeholders.
We plan extensive experimental work to test our model of agent behavior.
“Comparative static” and “comparative dynamic” analyses will examine how model outcomes change with changes in parameter values and initial conditions.
More to come soon:

Econometric plans
Empirical validation strategies
Agent decision-making details
Experimental work details
Monroe County Land Owners Survey

Additional UK TV – http://www.uktv-online.com/

The technology behind both region locking and the various methods of bypassing this is explained here – http://www.theninjaproxy.org/tv/a-fake-uk-ip-address/

Other Sources of reference – http://www.changeipaddress.net/

Finally if you need to get your BBC, ITV or Channel 4 fix then this is the post you need, basically an easy way to use a VPN to access British Television from anywhere including the BBC News stream here.

Starting a Video Blogging Business

Last updated on July 17th, 2017 at 12:08 pm

The internet continually opens up new markets and opportunities and now thousands of people are full time video bloggers. These people also known as vloggers sometimes have millions of subscribers and make videos on all sort of subjects. They make money by sponsorship, direct advertising or by simply running adsense blocks in their videos. If you invest in a few items like buy an IP address to enable multiple accounts you can create a very successful business.

Many people that watch video blogs regularly are motivated by the unique content that they see. We are referencing variety in regard to the quality of the videos that are produced. To be honest, text to videos are probably your worst choice when making a video blog.

You need to have a professional attitude, yet get crazy at the same time. The videos that you make can include graphics, text and even you! It is simple to add more than text to your videos to spice them up a bit. You really should not ignore putting text content in your videos. It does have some merit. Now let’s look at some really unique ways to make video blogs that you may like.

If you start to do video blogging, you will realize that it is so much better than text blogging any day of the week. But you still have to provide value to your viewing audience or you will fail. One of your goals with most if not all your videos is tell or show them something valuable. You have to present valuable information in your niche. When you do this, you’re just like a newscast!

You can do what you want, within reason, as you have so much leeway when it comes to providing content. Every video should be different. Your viewers should not be expecting to see the same thing time and again. Your vlog should always be lively and entertaining. That’s why the people will come back.

Every video that you shoot should consciously try to make eye contact with your viewers. This can be beneficial in many ways. The easiest way to do this effectively is to look into the camera you are using for the shoot. That is eye contact via video and it is very important for you to do. Always look into your camera directly when filming your videos. No need to be shy for any reason. If you are avoiding eye contact, it will have the same affect that it does in real life. That type of body language will make people suspicious and it just tends to go downhill fast.

One of the suggestions that copywriters learn is to imagine they are talking to a friend as they write their copy. The copy that you write needs to be done in this manner. It is very solid advice. So in the same way that you write your copy to a friend, you need to do your videos and record them in the same manner.

Most of the time this will carry over in a very subtle but evident way. In fact, your videos will make a very important connection with your audience when you do them in this manner. If your marketing has this strategy built into your videos, you will do very well selling products on the Internet with your video blogs.

Google has often said that “content is king”. If this is true, videos should be very valuable just ask Netflix ! So there you go, you can make a video content site and own a slice of your niche. The search engines will also love you if you had written content to your video blog site. You just need to take action to get great results.

Gordon Hamilton
English YouTube

Internet Marketing – Building a Amazon Kindle Business

Last updated on November 13th, 2017 at 08:56 pm

The Amazon Kindle has opened up a huge area of opportunity for internet businesses. The Kindle has revolutionised the way that millions of people buy their reading matter, which can be instantly delivered to their device minutes after purchase. When you think carefully, it’s an ideal area to focus an Amazon Kindle business strategy.

Never listen to anyone who says you cannot make a profitable business out of selling information. This is simply a matter of deciding you’re going to do it, and then you put your mind to it and make it happen. When you publish the right info products, you can use them to advance your cause or just sell for a profit. And this all leads up to doing business with Amazon at their Kindle Store. There’s a lot of competition in all niches, so don’t let that bother you and just do what you want to do and make money.

This is obviously where you need to start – the Kindle Home Page on Amazon.

You can find excellent cover designers that will not charge a lot, and this is an important investment. This is all about marketing, and your design will help or hurt your sales so it’s smart to do this. Amazon has all kinds of uses for your cover, and this actually helps them make more money from your book. Have a look at the your competition, for example check the best business books on Kindle and look at their covers and presentations.

Most people who are new to IM have not the slightest idea about designing or even using graphics software, so just outsource this to a professional. Don’t waste time on learning skills you don’t need instead focus on something core like your Kindle advertising strategy. There are more places you can market your Kindle book, and this means outside of Amazon. Find all the good forums that allow signature links, and then just join them and start posting. There are mailing lists and other places where you can build blogs or buy advertising. JV possibilities are all over the place, and this also includes social media.

There are some restrictions

You should also think about having your ebook proofed by someone who does this for a living. A proofreader’s primary job is to find grammar, spelling and syntax errors, and this is not the same thing as hiring an editor. A proofreader doesn’t spend much time critiquing the quality of your content, so if you want to make sure that your content is error free-in terms of spelling and things like that. If you’re on a budget, then you just do it yourself and do the best you can and it should be all right.

Sometimes you can find markets are restricted even for digital goods, you may have problems accessing sites for marketing and advertising purposes. These are normally due to geographic restrictions based on your IP address. However using a VPN you can access any of these sites, similar to these instructions about how you can use American DNS for Netflix.

Hey, ebook publishing is a lot of fun even though it’s work, and Amazon Kindle makes it easy to do. Amazon is very affiliate friendly, and they were the first to do affiliate marketing on the web. Don’t forget that you can just keep going and writing ebooks and selling them on Amazon. If you don’t fancy writing your own, sign up for an Amazon affiliate account and start promoting popular titles directly – you’ll not make as much money on each sale but Amazon volume can certainly add up.

Gerald Maximans
http://identityvoucher.co.uk/

The Face of Power

Last updated on December 22nd, 2019 at 07:34 pm

Power and politics are a normal part of organisational life. Power can be two faced. On the one hand it can be very negative, and this is probably the prevalent view of power in organisations. When power is negative it results in harm to others as someone, or some group relentlessly pursues a course of self-interest. The outcome of such power plays is a win-lose situation.

The other face of power is positive. It is a social construct that rather than seeks self-interest, instead turns power outwards to empower others. Those in a position of power will balance self-interest with the interest of others, engaging in open collaboration, alliance building and cooperation resulting in a win-win outcome.

For anyone involved in organisational life, the encouragement is to ensure that the positive use of power, and the empowerment of others is deployed. This can be enabled by acting out the belief, that cooperation and shared problem solving has a positive performance outcome for the business, whilst at the same time increases power available to both individuals and the organisation as a whole.

Furthermore, for those in positions of power, they must ensure that they focus on creating a healthy and balanced organisational environment that demonstrates key values of trust, integrity, openness and dignity in all its relationships. This includes those internal to the organisation such as employees, shareholders and contractors but also those external to the organisation in regards to customers, partners and suppliers.

It is important that leaders seeking to use tools like those demonstrated here – to learn the strategies required to develop positive power tactics, influence and behaviours necessary and demonstrate alternate ways in which power dynamics can operate within the organisations setting.

The impact of such positive use of power in the organisational setting can be far reaching. Not only can it add value to the stakeholders in the business, improve the sustainability of organisational performance but it also enables the organisation to be more humane and effective.

Edward Collins

Author of IP Cloaker

cipec.org

Category: research