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Licensing Issues Shut Down Pandora Outside US
randalotto writes "I'm in France for the summer and have been listening to Pandora at work. I tried logging on tonight and was greeted with a surprising message: 'We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the US. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative. ... The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.' I'm not sure what the deal is or what licensing requirements suddenly changed, but Pandora in France is no more..." Note: the above link redirects to the main site, for those inside the US.
Can't you get around it by using a proxy?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
TOR is NOT a proxy. It can be proxy like, but it is most certainly not a proxy.
First and foremost, TOR was designed to create Anonymity through reasonable doubt. That's its primary goal above all else. As a consequence of it's method of achieving Anonymity, it must act as a proxy for other connections.
Why the anal retentive distinction? Too many people are trying to use it in ways it was not designed too. It's ridiculous, but it's still in it's testing phase at the moment. People keep recommending TOR for one purpose or another, and then inevitably someone comes in and bad mouths TOR, which has already happened to your post and many others.
Well of course it's not going to perform up to anybody's expectations at the moment. With the bandwidth that is actually allocated to TOR through it's members (the exit nodes) it can barely keep up. Most people seem to install TOR and never choose to be an exit node for the rest of their peers. It's like have a torrent system in where only 1% (I admit I am pulling that number out of my ass) ever seed a single kilobyte.
If one does not need anonymity specifically, one can just look for regular proxies. There are plenty of free proxies, both anonymous (they don't send your IP through, but probably log) and paid proxies. A VPN to a system in the U.S with a hosting company is another solution too. Something in one of the "clouds". The choices are endless for this specific "problem".
I only recommend TOR when the purpose is to be completely anonymous, or to an extent in which it is extraordinary difficult to identify you even with participation of some of those involved. Most, if not all, of those purposes involve small amounts of data that the TOR network can handle.
It might be a little more work, but your friend could do a lot better than TOR, and it would be a good idea. At that very least he should at least be an exit node. I appreciate people who run exit nodes outside of the U.S.
I may sound a bit touchy on the subject, but I depend on TOR. Anonymity is very important to me and TOR is a fantastic tool to that end. I just wish the network was not slammed so hard with trivial high bandwidth applications and people that have no intention of ever contributing back.