united-states
Is it legal to watch or steam region-restricted shows or movies?
<p>I know some websites that offer some shows and videos <strong><em>legally</em></strong> and <strong><em>free</em></strong>. The only disadvantage is that they don't offer it in my area or region. </p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <em>could</em> lead to civil action. </p>

<p>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.</p>
