Australia's love affair with piracy may have inadvertently scored us a better deal on Netflix pricing, judging by comments from its chief financial officer, David Wells.
In a call to investors, Mr Wells said the company reduced the price of subscriptions to its video streaming service in countries with a high prevalence of piracy in order to stay competitive.
"Piracy is a governor in terms of our price in high piracy markets outside the US," Mr Wells said.
"We wouldn't want to come out with a high price because [if] there's a lot of piracy … we have to compete with that."
Australians pay $A8.99 per month for a basic Netflix subscription, which allows them to stream shows like House of Cards on one screen in standard definition. Higher price tiers will get subscribers higher definition and allow them to use the service on more than one device simultaneously.
It looks like Australia's renegade pirates have done law-abiding Netflix fans a favour because, when exchange rates are factored in, Australians are getting a better deal on subscription prices than many consumers overseas.
US consumers pay $US7.99 ($A10.25) a month for the lowest-tier Netflix subscription; New Zealanders pay $NZ9.99 ($A9.84), Canadians pay $C8.99 ($A9.47) and Brits pay £5.99 ($A9.47). Europeans in France, Germany and elsewhere fork out €7.99 ($A11.06) for the basic tier and the Swiss pay an extortionate CHF11.90 – almost $A16.
Some Latin American countries fare better: Brazilians pay $R19.90 ($A8.46) a month, while Argentinians pay just 39 pesos, or $A5.64 – but their economy's spat the dummy, so I wouldn't complain about that.
All things equal though, Australian customers get raw deal on Netflix content compared to countries like the US and UK, with Netflix yet to finalise many rights deals with distributors locally.
A survey of content on the Australian and US Netflix services found there were 7000 more titles available in the US, with Australians having access to just 1326 titles at launch.
Netflix said at the time these figures were inaccurate, but conceded the Australian catalogue was smaller than the US catalogue and sought to reassure Australians it was adding new titles to the local service on an ongoing basis.
For many Australians though, accessing the US catalogue by "geo-dodging" with a virtual private network (VPN) and tricking Netflix into thinking a computer is located in the US will continue to be a more attractive option.
In the same investor conference this week, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings said the company did not encourage geo-dodging but that it was "certainly less bad than piracy".
Mr Hastings said he believed the use of VPNs to access Netflix would soon "disappear" as a result of the company's rapid global expansion, which was allowing it to meet demand "directly" in each country.
However, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos admitted that keeping up with VPN usage was "kind of a whack-a-mole".
"It's become kind of a lifestyle thing for a very small segment of the population," he said.
"The real great news is, in the piracy capitals of the world, Netflix is winning. We're pushing down piracy in those markets by getting the access."
Federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull reiterated on Friday that VPNs were "extensively used for a wide range of legitimate purposes" and their use would not be a target of the government's efforts to crack down on copyright infringement in Australia.
