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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."
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.
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"
Each time a show is viewed so are the ads, each time the ads are viewed they make money.
The people putting up the ads are only putting them there because they will make money from them. Displaying, and paying for, an ad that the viewer cannot buy, or cannot understand, is a waste of money.
They try not to do that.
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.
And where would I, a Canadian, get a US IP?
Anyone remember when Slashdot used to be News for Nerds?
Score:-1, Funny
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.
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".
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.
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.
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