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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.
...err, I mean. Isn't this old news?
I though Europe was blocked 2 years or so earlier. Didn't know that France was an exception. Or he was lucky with his IP block being considered American.
I lost my sig.
The OP was about 'what's for outside of US' and Spotify it is, won't work over there.
http://www.spotify.com/en/help/faq/
What countries is Spotify available in?
Spotify is currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain.
I guess they'll add rest of the Europe and Nordic countries later.
There are free proxies out there like hotspot shield but I personally find that US Proxy very slow. Instead, I find a paid proxy like witopia works flawlessly without any lag. I have been using them for 2 months and I haven't had any problems with it. No software needed to be installed to use their service. You just simply login to their VPN, located in the US.
The big problem with being an exit node is a legal one. Specifically the Cease and Desist notices from the RIAA/MPAA.
I had an exit node with 2mbps bandwidth DEDICATED to TOR. Not too long later, my service provider started getting the copyright infringement emails. Even though I handled them all myself, and sent replies, called people, showed my service provider the TOR page about legal threats, and even promised to cover any legal costs *IF* it did ever get that that, eventually my service provider just got sick of receiving and forwarding the emails.
Now I don't specifically blame my service provider for this - it IS a potential legal exposure/battle they just don't need. Now you could blame the people using TOR for P2P, but they're doing it for exactly the reason TOR was created - to avoid detection of who they really are. Now you can't tell people TOR cannot be used for illegal activity, because the very reason TOR was CREATED was to facilitate illegal activity (eg. dissident speech in China). So what is illegal or not is a judgement call.
Therefore the blame ends up being on the RIAA/MPAA - but even there, they are legitimately trying to protect their rights. As unpopular as it sounds, and annoying and ineffective as it may be, there IS a reason they are sending out emails of the like. It's cheap for them to do it, and the threat of legal action is usually enough for ISP's to yank someone's pipe.
So my TOR node was, in the end, turned into a non-exit node. Until this kind of problem is solved (for which I don't know what the solution would be), then exit nodes on TOR will be a rare commodity, and as such, bandwidth on the TOR network will be limited because it is being constrained to very few eligible pipes.
I have a question about how TOR works. If I installed it, and configured it so I WAS an exit node, would it appear that all the requests coming from TOR (terrorist manuals, bestiality, child pornography, and so forth), were actually coming directly from me? Then, when arrested, my defense would be that it was really coming from the TOR node I was running?
Is there a way to clearly PROVE that it was a request coming from the TOR node, and I'm not a violent revolutionary furry pedophile?