Geolocation: IPv4 Subnet blocked by HULU, and others

Wed Dec 27 22:53:38 UTC 2017

On 2017-12-27 22:38, Jima wrote:
> On 2017-12-27 14:10, Jared Mauch wrote:
>> On Dec 27, 2017, at 3:50 PM, Grant Taylor via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> 
>> wrote:
>>> Doesn't Hulu (et al) have an obligation to provide service to their 
>>> paying customers?
>>>
>>> Does this obligation extend to providing service independent of the 
>>> carrier that paying customers uses?
>>>
>>> Or if Hulu choose to exclude known problem carriers (i.e. VPN 
>>> providers) don't they have an obligation to confirm that their 
>>> exclusions are accurate?  Further, to correct problems if their data 
>>> is shown to be inaccurate?
>>
>> I have a suspicion that these folks acquired IP space that was 
>> previously marked as part of a VPN provider, or Hulu is detecting it 
>> wrongly as VPN provider IP space.
>
> I was sitting on this, but what the heck.
>
> I personally am curious as to what bug and/or feature allowed a random 
> WISP in Utah (or the parent-ish ISP in New Jersey) to have IP space 
> allocated from AfriNIC.
>
> One might consider Hulu et al not so at-fault with that fact in 
> consideration.
>
> - Jima

Addresses aren't an identity nor are they tied to a physical location, 
so this is pretty irrelevant.  What Hulu should be doing is asking the 
user where they're located, instead of trying to tell them.  This thread 
happens here a couple times a week and the frequency of it will increase 
as addresses are recycled.  Clearly there is a lot of collateral damage 
from using GeoIP, but it mostly works on the big national ISPs so they 
still make money.  The WISPs and other small ISPs are an acceptable 
amount of loss, I guess.  The problem is that this is Hulu's fault but 
the pain is felt by everyone else except them, so they have no reason to 
want to stop doing this.

-Laszlo