Access restriction to live stream or on demand stream via geo-blocking
For financial or licencing reasons, it may be necessary to make some livestreaming video contents only accessible from certain countries. The best examples are TV films or sports events broadcasts, where the broadcaster is in possession of the “interenet” livestreaming rights only for Germany. If someone attempts to access the livestream from an IP address outside of Germany, the corresponding notification is displayed.
In case of distributing contents related to finance markets, there are often restrictions and clear policies regarding public distribution per live streaming.
In these cases, a GEO-IP filtering can be set up. Each live stream retrieval attempt is made from a specific IP address, which is allocated to certain country and provider. Because IP blocks do not tend to change in any great measure internationally, this protection is relatively reliable (cca 95-99%), and is used worldwide as a viable method.
Geo-blocking For Livestreaming And On Demand Video Streaming
- Livestreaming retrieval authorisation based on IP address
- IP address geographical allocation identification
- Whitelist / blacklist for certain countries
- 95-99% reliability
With the corresponding technical know how, anonymization, VPN connections and proxy servers, geo-blocking can be bypassed. Livestreaming retrieval requests made from German smartphones from abroad often proceed over German proxy servers. Therefore, geo-blocking cannot ensure a 100% protection. For these cases, livestreaming password protection is a possible alternative.
