Dear Mr Langsford,
I'm growing really tired of this morality game you seem to be demanding everybody but yourself play by.
In an open letter to Netflix, you demanded the company block access to the 200,000 Australian internet users that are already using its service, you claim "illegally".
But how can you admonish other companies and internet users for not playing by the rules when you and your competitors have been making them up since you go along since day one?
It's the internet age, dear. You can't try to block access to content in some areas of the globe and then expect people not to use existing consumer technologies to get access.
You claim Australian Netflix users are enjoying a "free ride" by allowing them to ignore "unauthorised back door access... thereby taking revenue away from local services which are investing to service the local market and endeavouring to provide choice and competition to consumers."
I'm beginning to feel like a broken record, but firstly, it's not a free ride. Australians pay approximately $9.50 a month for access, plus whatever registration fee they are charged for the VPN service that enables them access in the first place.
Also Netflix doesn't charge customers $20.99 a month and then expects them to pay for every single piece of content housed within. Quickflix does not provide choice and competition to consumers. Perhaps if you stopped charging people twice for access to the same content, more customers would flock to your service. $20.99 a month is a lot to pay considering you then also have to pay for the content you're consuming once you get access to Quickflix' content.
You're not the only guilty party, rest assured, Mr Langford. Perhaps if iTunes and countless TV and movie studios let go of the concept of local release dates and launched their films and television shows globally at the same time for the same price more consumers would use those services.
But why Quickflix isn't lobbying distrubutors to release access to their content for market competitive prices is beyond me. Quickflix can and should be competing with Foxtel. For a reasonable price, every Australian would accept Quickflix as a local alternative. But it hasn't and that's on you.
You also claim that Netflix is tacitly encouaging Australian internet users to violate the copyright of content owners.
I don't know what flavour Kool-Aid you've been drinking but Netflix owns a license to broadcast all of the content available on its service.
But it does well to remember that by geo-blocking Australian access to films and TV shows available is also tacitly encouraging internet users to head to the Pirate Bay instead of to Quickflix or iTunes or hell even JB Hi-Fi.
Considering that 70 per cent of illegally downloaded content is not available for legitimate purchase in Australia, according to canIwatchit.com.au, it might be a more effective use of your time to equalise access to content, regardless of geography, than it is to write open letters to your competitors asking them to have a less effective business strategy than you because it's just not fair.
Removing Australians the opportunity to legitimately pay for content and then expecting them not to pirate is like leaving an open cookie-jar in front of a child and expecting them not to devour them.
Also there's no place for morality in business. It's no more moral to charge Australians more for the same content they've had to wait longer than the rest of the world to consume than it is to subscribe to Netflix or any other streaming service, let alone commit piracy.
Australians wouldn't be using Netflix if they had a local, reasonably priced alternative. But they don't.
So here's a suggestion: Drop your prices, and lobby the government, distributors and your competitors for fair and equal access to content instead of wasting your time with open letters.
Yours sincerely,
Claire Porter (on behalf of the internet).