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Hulu Blocks International Access Via Witopia
An anonymous reader notes, and excerpts from, an article at PC Authority: "It's human nature that people always want what they can't have — which is why there's so much interest around the world in accessing the US-only Hulu site. Hulu offers a range of television shows for streaming, including Family Guy, The Daily Show and House along with a few full length movies. ... If you're outside the US, the easiest method for accessing Hulu that many people are discussing online, is using a US-based VPN, which tricks Hulu into thinking their computer is within the US. Initially Hulu started cracking down on free VPN services such as Hotspot Shield, but now it's turned its attention to Witopia — which costs $40 or $US60 per year but offers a faster, more secure and more reliable service than its free competitors. Initially Witopia's LA gateway remained unaffected, but now Hulu has blocked this as well."
Sorry I'd have been here sooner but my VPN is kinda laggy.
Dear content producers, on behalf of most of the world could you please do us a favor and release things globally? In case you haven't looked online, there are many sites where you can get things for free online (http://thepiratebay.org/) most of us though would really just like the support the creators. If you won't sell the product where your fans are, how are we supposed to support you? I can understand physical DVD sales or broadcasting it via television because that costs money, however the internet allows you to distribute content for -free- without the overhead of needing to translate, ship or alter any media. Even better have the fans do the work -for you- if bandwidth is a problem make it be P2P, if translating it into people's language is a problem allow fansubs. As for the "cultural barrier" many of your fans are educated enough to know that there is a difference in culture and will look up, or accept the cultural difference without being offended. This isn't advice just for American TV being released outside of America but also to anime companies and other companies releasing things globally.
Bottom line. We, the people who don't live in the country where you are currently producing, want to -buy- your content or at least look at the ads. If you won't let us, fine. We will simply pirate it. But chances are you want to make money right? So don't treat us like second-class citizens, we have money just like "your part" of the world does and no, we don't like getting episodes 1-2 months later than the rest of the world and no we don't like being shut off of a service that would allow us to watch TV while supporting the producers. If you must, just block non-American IPs but don't be idiots and start blocking VPNs and other ways to block your fans from trying to legitimately support you. We have other options, but you have an opportunity with the internet to allow us to pay for content. But if you don't want our money, fine. We will go back to pirating your shows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
http://www.hdstream.org
For the internet breaking all national boundaries!
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Build your own for $20 USD/month!
err... what money?
I thought Hulu was ad-supported?
And what American advertiser is going to want to place ads for videos that are seen in countries where they may not even have an establishment?
Even those that do - say, McDonald's - can't exactly advertise a burger that they're offering nation-wide in the U.S. for a particular price in another country where that product is not available, or is available but for a different price.
So, Hulu and the content rights holders would have to come to advertising agreements in all of the other nations being catered to while at the same time, trying not to piss off the the broadcasters in those areas too much (after all, the syndicated content -does- appear on TV much later, once these smaller broadcasters can actually afford it - but what advertisers are -they- going to attract if everybody's already seen it for free via Hulu?)... so good luck with that.
And if they -did- start charging cold hard cash... well, I guess one could claim iTunes as being highly successful, so if they did it well, it might even work. In due time, I suppose.
You got Hulu which is supported by ads. For every single person who views a show, they view ads.
Businesses pay for these ads to be shown. Maybe it's like 10 cents for a 30 second commercial, times the number of times its viewed, or something like that.
Since the advertisements are geared towards American audiences, when someone from a non-American audience views it, it devalues what the ads are worth. A business can argue since their target is Americans, and if let's say 50% of viewers are non-Americans, then they should only have to pay like 5 cents per 30 second commercial per viewer, and not the full price.
As the number of people viewing Hulu increases, and assume that the percentage of Americans viewing in total viewership decreases, then the profit Hulu makes falls.
Assuming that the number of American viewers is static, Hulu has to pay for more people to view their site, while having a fixed influx of revenue.
Of course, this can be solved simply if content providers allowed other countries to view the site, and also had advertisers geared towards that audience.
I know of many people who live overseas since they are in the US military and they have a witopia account so they can access US content while they're overseas. They also still purchase American products on their local base, and they actually like to watch US commercials since all the local stuff is in Japanese. I guess we'll have to find a way around this too...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
They are making money. Each time a show is viewed so are the ads, each time the ads are viewed they make money. They are spending money in order to stop themselves from making money. I realize the ads are targeted towards a U.S. audience. But if the person is watching a show in English, then I am fairly certain that they understand the language. From my own experience many of the products advertised on Hulu are available internationally. So again I repeat, Hulu is spending money in order to stop themselves from making money.
They don't give geographical information, and therefore, can never be properly served with accurate ads. Those of us international people, waiting for this, are just going to have to hold tight . There isn't any need to lobby anybody, this is all coming, very soon, for everybody.
I record my sleeptalking
On a side note, I find totally rubbish the laws about forcing dubbing and subbing, and if Hulu was available in France/Germany, I would use it instead of tpb. But right now I don't have a choice, and it just piss me off.
EULA : By reading the above message, you agree that I now own your soul.
I actually was thinking about getting witopia exactly for this reason (I travel a lot). How difficult is it to insert country based advertisement based on the accessing IP? Not very difficult. But these guys seem to prefer to loose business to torrent.
US tourism ad's. You tell me Vegas, NYC and other cities wouldn't want to place inexpensive ad's to foreign nationals? I've been Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, etc. etc. and have enjoyed McDonalds, Snickers, Coke, Pepsi, Subway, KFC, Nestle's in all of these places not to mention Apple, HP, Canon, Nikon, etc. There are plenty of products/brands for them to sell ads too. Come on Hulu get on with it and start allowing overseas IP addresses to access.
I tried accessing hulu through a squid proxy in the US. It get's to the "loading video", but then "we are unable to stream this video. please check your internet connection and try again". I wonder if it's a bandwidth issue, or perhaps squid is doing something weird.
For $19 a month I can get a virtual private server at any number of hosting services in the US.
Then, I install and configure OpenVPN on it.
Voila. My own private VPN that I can use to get to Hulu, and they aren't likely to block it since I'd be the only one using that particular IP address.
A little Linux/Unix knowledge goes a looooong way.
Dear content producers
Dear Darkness404, you are wasting your breath. You've just sent an open letter on a geek site to a bunch of B-Ark movie producers. The chances that they read this are nil. Your reasoning and logic don't work on people who have a reputation for indulging in extreme drug habits and alcoholism, not to mention corruption and other excesses. These people would sell their mother's kidney on Ebay if they could find a way. Trying to reason with such vipers is probably quite bad for your health. But you may be modded up.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Hulu = Media Facism Anyone can give any excuse , but that is fascism.
Could you point out which provisions are supposed to impose this requirement? I know for a fact that many cinemas and even late-night TV are showing original language versions (subtitled at worst) which are popular with both expats and local movie enthusiasts in Germany and increasingly even France. As a matter of EU law, the Common Market actually demands Television without Frontiers with the rights having to be acquired by the broadcaster for the entire satellite footprint, i.e. regularly across national and language borders.
The Internet was designed to work around roadblocks to the free flow of data.
If the media companies push hard enough, more people will simply setup private proxies. A PC with a private proxy looks just like a PC with a user, to a site like Hulu. You can even tunnel it over ssh or a traditional VPN if you want to get fancy. Blocking ports doesn't work, unless you block them all; software is flexible.
It only takes one person out of seven billion to make something available to the other 6,999,999,999 people. There is simply no way to stop data from moving. It's a fundamental property of information. Even flash drive via carrier pigeon has higher bandwidth than most people get.
Someone needs to shake some sense into the media industries. The only thing they are doing is failing their shareholders.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I'm watching eposide 6 of The Amazing Race right now, via Hulu, sitting in my apartment in Shanghai, China. No problem at all. And I watched a movie last night via Netflix as well. There are lots of VPNs - commercial and free - that work really, really well...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
...and has yet to realize that there is no such thing on the Net as "can't haves" and "US-only sites". Technically, inaccessibility is damage and deservedly gets routed around. Laws trying to protect flawed business models that ask for the crippling of technological infrastructures to prevent larger audiences are a waste of taxpayers' money, much like a crackdown on automobiles would have been about a century ago to save forever the then status quo of the "flourishing" horse cart and pony express "industries".
I can understand physical DVD sales or broadcasting it via television because that costs money, however the internet allows you to distribute content for -free- without the overhead of needing to translate, ship or alter any media. Even better have the fans do the work -for you- if bandwidth is a problem make it be P2P, if translating it into people's language is a problem allow fansubs. As for the "cultural barrier" many of your fans are educated enough to know that there is a difference in culture and will look up, or accept the cultural difference without being offended.
The pro from Google will move on the moment you begin peddling the nonsense that video distribution over the Internet won't cost him a dime.
Fansubs are poorly written and badly acted.
You do not make or keep your reputation in this business by handing foreign markets over to amateurs.
It isn't the fan the pro is worried about when he looks at cultural differences. the complexities of translation.
It is the larger audience he is trying to reach. It is access to markets the fan can't give him.
I just use my American-hosted server as an SSH proxy to watch Hulu.
A few weeks back I purchased a VPS server for the purpose of watching Hulu. I tunneled all my traffic by using SOCKS and many services clearly thought I was in the USA except Hulu.
Hulu seems to be doing client side checks, checking your Locale/time settings I suspect.
I am in Brisbane, QLD, Australia and I belive my VPS was in a Houston datacenter in Texas USA.
European content provider are idiots. This is the main issue here.
Take Germany. The TV networks ignore the fact that many people want to watch the shows with their original, english audio. This is not possible - you have to bear the stupid German syncs.
Monitoring the filesharing/rapidshare networks, shows like "Glee" are exceptionally popular right now, yes the networks actually monitor the sharing networks - so much that it's even a four page article in the largest economic magazine last week.
How much does it take for them to get the message?
Take Ebooks. No one here has understood that customers simply will not buy DRM ridden media. European publishers ignore this fact.
HDTV via Cable? Haha not in Europe, buddy (mostly)
Stupid DRM all over the board? yep
Most pirating in the world? Right here
boy, I wonder how...
I know a lot of people that use Hulu via VPN. Honestly, it's exactly what I want as a customer.
Why are European networks unable to deliver?
I mean, they can even save money not doing their retarded syncs.
I know my wife would happily cough up $7 or so per episode just to watch the latest edition of Nip/Tuck or Californication every week. She'd be quite happy if something like Hulu or Amazon allowed her to post her money to the content providers in exchange for this, rather than just buying the DVD set (at the end of each series screening) every time we visit the USA. Wholesale blocking doesn't do the industry any favours.
I always have wondered why on a site where supposedly you find the last remainings of intelligence on America I see this shit everyday. Could it be possible that the best minds from a dying country would be, inherently, just as racist as your hardcore redneck next door?? also, wake up! Americans are now a minority on America.
Rights are complex. They can be, essentially, broken up into infinite pieces. I can sell you the right to be the first to broadcast something, and sell the rights to subsequent broadcasts to someone else. That's what "all rights reserved" means ... if I don't specifically say they're included, they 're not included.
Sometimes companies screw up when they sell rights, failing to anticipate some technology, and finding out they are prevented from taking advantage of that technology because the rights they sold were too broad in scope.
They can be anything; I could create a contract selling the rights to broadcast in any year the Yankees did not win the World Series, or the rights to broadcast only on tuesdays in Upper Volta and only if the date is an odd number on the Gregorian Calendar. Whatever.
Hulu has to prove to the content creators that they are capable of enforcing the rights they buy from the creators, who (we assume, because it's US made content streamed to US viewers) are the rights holders. Hulu very much wants to stream to every country in the world, but before it can do that, it has to show it's capable of enforcing the rights it buys and limiting the scope of it's stream to those it has the right to stream to, and no-one else.
If Hulu fails, the content creators will just shit-can them and get someone else. Hulu has a lot at stake here, and they can't afford to screw up. So, they're going to limit streams to US residents, because that's the only viewers they have a right to stream to.
Later, if they pull this off, they'll set up elsewhere by negotiating with rights holders elsewhere.
Chances are when they get around to 'elsewhere' they are not the same people they buy the rights from for the US streams; the content creators are in the business of selling rights to others, and those rights probably cover what Hulu is doing. So, Hulu needs to negotiate with those people, not the original content creators.
Ads are irrelevant ... that's purely Hulu's business and revenue model, and has nothing to do with whether you can view the stream wherever you are. Content creators and rights holders don't care how Hulu makes it's money as long as they get paid themselves.
I see all these comments saying "But Hulu shows only American adverts!!11".
If Hulu can determine so easily where you're coming from, how hard would it be for them to do some analytics on viewership for a particular show and tailor the ad prices accordingly? Additionally, how are these ads served up? Are they transcoded into the video being viewed? If not, dynamically change the ads being displayed to the user based on his/her region.
Win-win-win-win. Hulu gets more money from global advertisers. More companies get to shove their ads into what has become fairly hot online real estate. Global viewers get access to shows they otherwise would have to get from (what is considered) shady sources. And the show-makers/'content providers' make more money (not sure of this though - do they make money from Hulu views?)
Am I missing something obvious here? Is there a reason this is so hard it hasn't been done yet?
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Look at the bright side: if it weren't for us Europeans you guys would still be Indians. (With apologies to H.Schmidt).
You have been trolled, dumbfuck.
no. people want what they want, and people expect to have what they CAN have. before there was electricity, people had to wait for ships to bring newspapers from europe with the latest news (from 6 months ago). If they had a telegraph installed right into their living room, would they still go to the docs every day? people CAN have tv shows, and that's why they want them from Hulu. And if Hulu won't give it to them, somebody else will.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
DVD region are *whole* region, and no specific countries. DVD region code the UAE and middle east is for example region 2 and Europe too. Would you care to compare censoring of UAE with the one of say, sweden ? Censorship at state level is done film by film (usually an authority stamp an approval) and is fully independant of DVD region. The only reason DVD region is there is to stage different price and release date for different region, parallel to the release date of the films. Whether this is enough of a reason, I will let other judge, but my opinion is that it is certainly abused by the cinematographic industry.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I have seen film in VO-stf in France on *public* channel, and I have bought DVD without even subtitle or dubs in France in big retailer. Sure there could have been a law they ignored, but I would like to see that law linked and shown. There was an old law in ~1930 saying they could only show original film in a few cinema, but has been AFAIK repelled or not enforced for DVD.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
As an American expat in China I rely on Witopia to connect me back to the states and allow me to pretend I still live in a country that lets me access any site I want, facebook and hulu included. This isn't a rant against content providers nor the Chinese government, but COME ON! All I want to do is watch my favorite shows from the states... I'd even pay for the privilege. As there is no legal way for me to watch content from the states, I instead turn to pirated DVDs and the huge range of options I have for Chinese hosted videos. Yeah, the Chinese subtitles are annoying, but the trade off of being able to watch my favorite shows at all is worth it. Sorry content guys. Unless you provide me with a legal option to watch content available in the states I'm going to go the bootleg route.
Props to Nat (of Witopia). They saved my bacon more than once when I was doing forward Intel operations all over the ME & SWE. No, not kidding. No, he didn't know who I was/what I was doing. Their/his service is awesome and they were flexible enough (in terms of modifying configs) to allow me to get an SSL VPN out of just about any place in the damn world.
Giganews doesn't discriminate against you based on what country you're in (even on suspicion, like hulu is doing). Even better, you can get your TV shows without the forced advertising.
"the internet allows you to distribute content for -free- without the overhead of needing to translate, ship or alter any media."
The above statement is typical of people expecting something for nothing. As an IT professional of 25 yrs working for the largest companies in the world, I can assure you that online distribution of content to the masses is extremely expensive. Please review my itemization of costs below for streaming content:
i. translation of media to suitable format for streaming
ii. storage for streaming media
iii. scaling storage systems for streaming media to allow concurrent access by millions of viewers
iv. archival system for backup of streaming media
v. redundant storage to protect streaming media in case of storage system failure
vi. data center plant costs (mortgage/structure/power/cooling/operations/management/maintenance/warranties/electricians/HVAC contracts)
vii. bandwidth and network infrastructure to support streaming media for millions of concurrent users
viii. geographic distribution of data centers for locale serving, bandwidth optimization, and disaster protection
ix. upgrades to network and systems infrastructures for scaling and modernization
x. network intrusion prevention and detection systems
xi. royalties and licenses for content of streamed media
xii. offsite storage of physical media archives for recovery purposes
I use Road Warrior VPN.com and they are not blocked by hulu at all.
While the fact that Hulu, NBC.com et al blocks content to people like me outside of the USA is annoying, what almost drives me battier is other sites that embed/deep-link this content as well.
Ain't it Cool News is famous for this - They're always embedding or deep-linking the latest SNL video or The Office preview that doesn't work outside of the USA, and they're not alone.
Hey 'webmasters'- If people outside of the USA can't view the content hosted on video sites, stop deep linking to it on *your* sites - You wind up looking stupid.
Yours truly,
An Annoyed Canadian
While Hulu did block all 4 of Witopia's US-based openvpn servers that you can find here http://wiki.witopia.net/wiki/Changing_Gateways , they also offer this one prod03.pvpn.lax.witopia.net which they specifically direct to IPs not blocked by Hulu. Witopia's online support directed me to this server and Hulu's been working fine ever since. I don't know how long it will last but Witopia must know they have subscribers specifically for Hulu access.
Is it really just human nature, or could it — just possibly — be, that the American entertainment is, really and truly, the most entertaining, for whatever reasons? There really is so much of it — with something for everyone: from Michale Moore to South Park, from zombies to healthy families...
But no, let's not acknowledge, American-made can be good for anything — let's pretend, all interest is only there because of access limits...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Umm, fansubs aren't 'acted'. They're 'typed'.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Im not in the US and the TV shows that I want to watch are not realeased here in any way.
By another name still spells TYRANNY...
If you exclude content from people they will still get it and while those you have excluded it from are downloading it then some people will access will opt to obtain it illegally since so many people are doing it.
They need to get rid of all those old dinosaurs running these media companies.
Hulu: brought to you by the same people who thought up the DMCA. Big media conglomerates that would love to kill user-generated content, and who have a system that directly competes with YouTube. Even if it's free now, as soon as they have a hammerlock on things (again) the price will go up. Oh, and the content, even if it's fun, is to a large extent likely to reduce your creativity, productivity and emotional linkage to your community.
In your own best interest, you should try to get your self and your community blocked by Hulu. It's evil.