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I know some websites that offer some shows and videos legally and free. The only disadvantage is that they don't offer it in my area or region.

According to U.S. law, is it okay or legal to use VPN to watch those movies? I will not financially affect them because if they need money, they will simply put a payment gateway on their website. Some websites use geo-restriction which restrict service to these websites based on location, is it legal to use a VPN on sites with geo-restrictions.

User37849012643
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user2824371
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1 Answers1

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If you are in the US it is not a crime to access regionally restricted content. It is a crime in some countries such as Belarus and North Korea. It is probably a violation of the TOS (for Netflix e.g.) in the US, meaning that you could be sued by Netflix for copyright violation. Their content may be licensed in a specific way so that for instance X can only be viewed in Japan -- they do not have the copyright owners' permission to distribute everywhere. Such restrictions are not valid within the EU. So, it could lead to civil action.

There are also criminal laws against "unauthorized access" of a computer (server), but courts in the US have not found violations of a TOS to constitute unauthorized access in the criminal sense. It may not even be a violation of the TOS, and it would depend on the wording of their access-restriction section of the TOS.

user6726
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