Even though we are a tiny fraction the size of Netflix, it seems a good time to mention that at MUBI we try our best to do the right thing. That is, if you subscribe to MUBI in one country, you can use that subscription in any other country. This is non-trivial because film rights are highly localized and we have different films available around the world, but we have at least a few hundred in every single country. But it gives you the advantage that you can travel and see new films that wouldn't otherwise be available.
It definitely does get thorny around integrations (PS3/PSN billing), but it's something we actively think about.
Actually it doesn't let you use MUBI with a PSN account registered to a different country than the one you are currently in (it must use IP checks I presume). You need to register a new PSN account for every country.
Right, well that's why I mentioned it. This is an impedance mismatch between our systems. PSN billing is based on account affiliation, MUBI geofiltering based purely on IP.
I'm not sure if they verify that you are in the UK when you create a UK PSN account or if it just requires a UK credit card, but at any rate, once you have it, you can use it anywhere in the world. This conflicts directly with MUBI's licensing rights where we have different film rights in each country and can only stream certain films with certain subtitles in different countries. Because we are integrated with PSN billing and we have a PPV option this makes it impossible to support a foreign account because the user would be paying the wrong amount, in the wrong currency, and this would not meet our agreements with rightsholders. This is just one of many thorny issues (don't get me started on sub-regions like Isle of Man which have the same PSN store despite different ISO country). Technically the gap could be bridged, but the sheer weight of the logic in the code and also for our accountants to sort out is not justifiable.
However, the essence of our service is that if you buy a subscription from us you can use it anywhere in the world. Currently for PS3 that means you have to buy it from us and not from Sony, and also you do have to contact us to re-affiliate your MUBI account with a different PSN account if you move. We have plans to improve that so you can have multiple PSN accounts affiliated with a single MUBI account though that itself is also a significant engineering initiative that has not made it to the top of the priority list yet. As imperfect a solution as that is, once set up it will actually work even for people who regularly move between multiple countries, and I believe we are ahead of any premium content streaming company in that regard.
Great! I know for a fact that Netflix does this, so it's good to see you guys are inheriting the better parts of Netflix ;). I have a Canadian Netflix account, which while in Canada can only access licensed Canadian content, but while in the States I have access to the whole gamut of goodies that are available here and not back at home.
It definitely does get thorny around integrations (PS3/PSN billing), but it's something we actively think about.