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Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

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Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#81

Post by thechangelog »

jarek wrote: post #46
jacques_chester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protection is not the problem. The problem is that each jurisdiction is a different sales market for copyright holders. While selling into Canada, Australia etc the sellers may have given over a total copyright license, or there might be terms trying to prevent "leakage" from the home market and so on. For example, as an Australian, I used to be able to watch whole episodes of Stewart & Colbert via the website. Then…

And in a lot of cases it simply doesn't make sense to deal with a whole new regulatory system for a 10% bump in potential market size.

Not sure why you got downvotes for this. This is exactly my take, too. The regulatory hurdles for online producers are significant and Canada is a small market relative to the United States.

As my previous comment indicated I know the hurt of learning about a product and finding out it's unavailable here. However, I understand the economics at work and feel that–while they're frustrating–they're totally understandable.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#82

Post by thechangelog »

a-US-er wrote: post #71
thechangelog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's about the same. However, since we Canadians get such a huge amount of our media from the US it's likely more of a disappointment.

However, since we Canadians get such a huge amount of our media from the US a fact about which Canadians and other non-Americans never seem to tire of complaining, until the day they discover that the e-spigot has been shut-off for them, then it's whambulance time: "Where are my American TV shows and movies!"

Can you explain that differently? I've read your comment a few times and haven't been able to grasp it.

My comment, based on a possibly faulty interpretation of your comment:

I don't feel entitled to get US media as a Canadian. It's just extremely prevalent. Our country watches CSI at the same time yours does, and American Idol, and pretty much everything else. So we get used to feeling like members of the US media market. Sure we have our Rick Mercer Report, et al, but the dominant media is American.

I certainly didn't mean to complain. I understand that negotiating distributions rights for a country a tenth the size isn't high on the priority list of US distributors. What I was trying to say is that it catches us of guard (though less and less frequently) to find that for online services we are often excluded when for so much of our daily media lives we are full-fledged, practicing Americans.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#83

Post by pstack »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #17

A lot of these issues can be resolved for $5/month and less than that if you're willing to setup your own private server. http://www.unblock-us.com/ lets you access American Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, ESPN3, etc etc. I'm not affiliated with them, but been using the service the past couple of months and it works amazingly. In fact I'm using American Netflix on my Xbox 360 as we speak. $5/month is a heck of a lot cheaper…

It's a feasible workaround, but it's vital that content owners start to recognize the importance of a more rational licensing scheme. Different release dates for videogames depending on which hemisphere you live in, entirely different sets of content (Pandora, Netflix, etc) because you're a couple degrees north or south. It's such an antiquated model for a modern world in which the global cultures have shrunk the distances between each other.

On the other hand, things like this make me slightly amused. It's good to see the corporations run into self-imposed problems from the same institution they otherwise typically profit from and prop up.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#84

Post by nolanw »

recurrie wrote: post #32
nolanw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, it's a combination of the licensing being different (as in the terms of your license probably only cover the United States to start), and the CRTC's content laws and other regulations being annoying enough not to bother with considering our relatively smaller market size. (I think it's considerably easier to go from Canada to the US than in the opposite direction.)

CRTC Canadian content regulations don't apply to the internet.

Good call, I had no idea.

Looking into it, apparently the CRTC believes that internet audio and video broadcasting services are under its jurisdiction, but it has exempted all such services from regulation. The notice is at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1999/PB99-197.htm.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#85

Post by prawn »

hardy263 wrote: post #59
prawn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not, but in this case I imagine it was scratching a personal itch and no other country in the world starts with "can" - I imagine that bit really rubs it in the face of Canadians. I'm sure other copycats will emerge as people think up amusing domain options.

No, it's probably not because our country starts with "can" The real itch is that some of these services are available as long as I drive an hour south and get past the border and find open wi-fi. Pretend you're an avid soccer fan. It's as if the world cup was on TV, and your friends are all crowding around it. All you get is the commentary and cheering when the ball is scored, but you can't actually see the game, si…

"can" bit was tongue in cheek - sorry!

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#86

Post by a-US-er »

thechangelog wrote: post #82
a-US-er wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, since we Canadians get such a huge amount of our media from the US a fact about which Canadians and other non-Americans never seem to tire of complaining, until the day they discover that the e-spigot has been shut-off for them, then it's whambulance time: "Where are my American TV shows and movies!"

Can you explain that differently? I've read your comment a few times and haven't been able to grasp it. My comment, based on a possibly faulty interpretation of your comment: I don't feel entitled to get US media as a Canadian. It's just extremely prevalent. Our country watches CSI at the same time yours does, and American Idol, and pretty much everything else. So we get used to feeling like members of the US media m…

You hear non-Americans complaining constantly about America's "cultural imperialism," that they're inundated with American TV shows and movies of low quality, but then as soon as they're unable to get their fix of American media, (or least not able to get it as easily), they start to complain: "Why isn't Hulu available in my country!?"

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#89

Post by joelhaasnoot »

noarchy wrote: post #47

I wouldn't call it a "service", per se, but you cannot buy a Kindle from Amazon.ca. You can, however (and this is more on-topic), buy books for it, but the selection is limited. Edit: I should add that a lot of the things that are available on Amazon.com (the US site) won't ship to Canada. You don't even get the option to pay for extra shipping charges; it just won't ship, period. Edit 2: An article about Amazon's ef…

That's crazy, because the do ship the Kindle to Europe. There too aren't a lot of books available due to rights issues, but still. What's the problem with the Kindle?

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#90

Post by pmjordan »

rb2k_ wrote: post #76
OmarIsmail wrote: post #17

A lot of these issues can be resolved for $5/month and less than that if you're willing to setup your own private server. http://www.unblock-us.com/ lets you access American Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, ESPN3, etc etc. I'm not affiliated with them, but been using the service the past couple of months and it works amazingly. In fact I'm using American Netflix on my Xbox 360 as we speak. $5/month is a heck of a lot cheaper…

I wonder how they're doing this by just changing the DNS servers? Do they return their own IPs and run a man-in-the-middle kind of thing? UPDATE: Just signed up. They do actually seem to redirect the traffic from domains like hulu.com/pandora.com/... to IPs that run a squid proxy. My guess would be that they just redirect the queries for the geo-localization to their squid servers and allow you to pass those that way

I wonder how they handle the flash video streaming, and stuff secured via HTTPS (e.g. BBC iPlayer for iPad/iPhone). HTTP is easy to transparently proxy due to the "Host:" header, but HTTPS and many other protocols don't have anything equivalent. I suppose they could just have a lot of IP addresses and assign one for every host they proxy.

In general, I'm surprised such services stick around at all. You'd think the MPAA etc. would contractually require Hulu, etc. to routinely get accounts with such services, use them to sniff out the IPs and block them. I guess that means proxies aren't (perceived) a big enough threat. Yet.

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