Geoblocking

Sometimes, you need to restrict your cloud-hosted or registered content to viewers in certain countries. Geoblocking gives you this control. Through your JWP dashboard, you can set geoblocking rules for a property, multiple videos, or a single video.

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Geoblocking rules apply only to the content played within a player. Geoblocking rules do not impact player libraries nor playlists.

Geoblocking allows you to protect your content and manage regional access. You can use it to:

Comply with licensing and distribution agreements
Restrict entire properties to specific geographic regions
Allow global access to promotional or free-to-view content while limiting other videos

When a viewer attempts to access your content, JWP checks their IP address against the countries you have allowed or denied. Depending on your configuration, playback will either be permitted or blocked.

How geoblocking works

Geoblocking behavior differs depending on how your content is hosted and which API endpoint is used to access it.

Cloud-hosted content

For content hosted on JWP’s cloud infrastructure, geoblocking follows the behavior below.

Request	Behavior
Playlist requests	Geoblocking rules are enforced for items returned in playlist responses (`/playlist` endpoint).
Manifest requests	Geoblocking rules are also applied to direct calls for manifests (for example, `.m3u8` or `.mpd` URLs).
Playback JSON requests	Direct calls made to retrieve metadata for a specific media item (`/playback.json` endpoint) are not geo-blocked.

Externally hosted or registered content

For content that is hosted externally but registered in your JWP account, geoblocking follows the behavior below.

Request	Behavior
Playlist requests	Geoblocking rules are enforced for items returned in playlist responses (`/playlist` endpoint).
Manifest requests	Direct requests to externally hosted manifests are not geo-blocked.
Playback JSON requests	Direct calls made for a given media item (`/playback.json` endpoint) are not geo-blocked.

Applying geoblocking rules

You can define geoblocking behavior at multiple levels, depending on how broadly you want your rule to apply.

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When both property-level and video-level rules exist, the video-level rules always take precedence.

Geoblocking level	Description
Property	Set a geoblocking restriction for all cloud-hosted content within a specific property. Apply property-level geoblocking.
Video	Set geoblocking restrictions that are applicable to an individual video or to a group of videos. Apply video-level geoblocking.