New Zealand ISP Offers "Global Mode" So Users Can Circumvent Geo-Restrictions

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New Zealand ISP Offers "Global Mode" So Users Can Circumvent Geo-Restrictions

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 27, 2013 @09:29PM from the one-price-for-all dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Many content sites restrict access from different markets or have variable pricing for downloads in different markets. New Zealand-based ISP Slingshot is now offering a 'global mode' that lets customers hide their location. This means they can access overseas online services that would normally be restricted to specific markets."

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Hum interesting by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-27 21:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Seems like (N/U)SA needs to go there and free the shit out of them from that regime whatever they have. Do they also have oil?
1. Re:Hum interesting by jonwil · 2013-06-27 21:46 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_and_gas_industry_in_New_Zealand says they do have oil.
2. Re:Hum interesting by Zemran · 2013-06-27 21:56 · Score: 2
  
  They have sheep and scenery, ooh, and the Lord of the Rings was filmed there. Nothing to liberate.
  
  --
  I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
3. Re:Hum interesting by master5o1 · 2013-06-27 22:02 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There's even a bit of marketing to help with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RenRILqwhJs
  
  --
  signature is pants
4. Re:Hum interesting by Arancaytar · 2013-06-27 23:19 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Well then let's invade and catch this Osama Bin Sauron guy.
5. Re:Hum interesting by mwvdlee · 2013-06-27 23:59 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  It's not like Iraq, where you can just invade one country to catch a guy in different country which doesn't even share a border.
  Osama Bin Sauron is actually in NZ, so they should probably invade Indonesia or Papua New Guinea, whichever has most fuel.
  
  --
  Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
6. Re:Hum interesting by shikaisi · 2013-06-28 04:01 · Score: 2
  
  then they obviously are hiding WMD's
  Yes, they have pressure cookers in New Zealand. That proves it.
  
  --
  No left turn unstoned.
7. Re:Hum interesting by davester666 · 2013-06-28 04:30 · Score: 2
  
  and courses on how to use them.
  Obviously, an attack on America is imminent.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
More importantly by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-27 21:34 · Score: 5, Funny

this comment is not available in your country
And that's the way it should be done by Parsiuk · 2013-06-27 21:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

There are no borders in the Internet. End of story.
1. Re:And that's the way it should be done by Zemran · 2013-06-27 21:57 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  ... and the USA is the land of the free.
  
  --
  I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
2. Re:And that's the way it should be done by JustOK · 2013-06-27 22:20 · Score: 2
  
  Then why do they have internet border routers?
  
  --
  rewriting history since 2109
3. Re:And that's the way it should be done by six025 · 2013-06-27 23:46 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  There are no borders in the Internet. End of story.
  There are no borders, anywhere - END OF STORY. ... except those invented by "man" for the purposes of control, so why would the internet be any different? Because it's cyber? ;-)
  Anyway, I agree with the premise that there should be no borders on the 'net so just playing the devils advocate here. And I also truly believe that borders between countries now cause more problems than they solve, but that's just an ideal not the reality, unfortunately.
  Peace,
  Andy.
4. Re:And that's the way it should be done by CohibaVancouver · 2013-06-28 02:00 · Score: 2
  
  There are no borders, anywhere - END OF STORY
  Except for oceans, great lakes, raging rivers, mountain ranges, ice sheets, impassible jungles & deserts and rivers of lava....
Finally a good ISP service. by eddy · 2013-06-27 21:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sound great. Wish my ISP had the same. All this 'free market' is bullshit when it's perverted with artificial region restrictions. Here's the REALITY of it straight out of my inbox:

This is an important announcement for our MYREGIONHERE users regarding pricing on the Green Man Gaming website. We are always reviewing our policies here and have decided to make a change that will help us deliver the value you expect from GMG. All MYREGIONHERE users will notice that prices on the Green Man Gaming website are now shown as GBP (£) instead of USD ($). Of course, this is a change and change doesn't suit everyone, but we hope that this will enable us to stay competitive and continue to serve your market diligently. Thanks for your continued support The GMG Team
Some times even if you can actually buy the product, you can't use it because there are further region checks down the line (e.g steam refusing out-of-region keys).

--
Belief is the currency of delusion.
1. Re:Finally a good ISP service. by AK+Marc · 2013-06-27 22:24 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  My wife loves Sims. She bought Sims3 in the US before we moved out of the country. She later downloaded an expansion. The expansions are country coded. She had to return it, then buy it from a US server, lying about her address. It didn't do a location check on her IP, so she could download it, but she had to lie to access a computer service to buy it, so a felon she is, if anyone ever cared to prosecute that particular crime.
  
  It's amazing how hard they made it to buy things. At least region coded players are gone (Even if the media is still player-coded), because there is no more PAL/NTSC with HDTV. I've never seen a TV, US or otherwise that couldn't play any HDMI source, even if not "proper" to the region. For all the ills of HDMI, I no longer have to look for PAL/NTSC when buying components to go with my mix of media. Though an Xbox will only play media of its region, even if my PAL Xbox works fine on my NTSC HDTV over HDMI, I must still buy PAL games. So any US-only release is out, and my Wii is US, so I have to buy mail-order from the US, ship it to a US address (none of the major media peddlers will sell out of the country), and have it re-shipped to get to me.
  
  Games like World of Warcraft let you buy from anywhere and play like you are anywhere. Someone in the US can buy a Europe region game and play Europe servers.
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
2. Re:Finally a good ISP service. by TheDarkMaster · 2013-06-27 23:35 · Score: 2
  
  "Free market" is for big corps. For you and me, is feudalism 2.0
  
  --
  Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
3. Re:Finally a good ISP service. by kaatochacha · 2013-06-28 05:08 · Score: 2
  
  Get a bargain basement DVD player from China, then google up region unlocking it. You can usually make it "region free"
  Most of the super cheap devices can't be bothered to make different versions for every country, so they manufacture one and software code it.
  It usually just involves hitting a certain key sequence to get into the diagnostics.
What is global mode? by A+beautiful+mind · 2013-06-27 21:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is it some proxy? Is it a weirdly labeled block of IPv4 addresses? Is it some DNS level trickery?

--
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
1. Re:What is global mode? by geekmux · 2013-06-27 22:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Is it some proxy? Is it a weirdly labeled block of IPv4 addresses? Is it some DNS level trickery?
  Yes, it is a proxy. It's got a rather odd name, you might have heard of it before.
  They call it "PRISM".
PIRACY! by Alsee · 2013-06-27 21:58 · Score: 2

They are obviously promoting PIRACY, because paying the copyright-holder's requested price (possibly zero) to converse in one region while you're in a different region is blatantly THEFT.
Theft theft theft theft stealing theft theft theft burglary theft theft theft larceny theft theft rape theft.
-

--
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
1. Re:PIRACY! by fa2k · 2013-06-27 22:16 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but you're on to something. If we're talking streaming of entertainment, the people using this service are not actually breaking copyright in the US or NZ. They are not making a copy. They are however very likely breaking the terms of use of the service (though the streaming site could be relying 100 % on IP-blocking, and not have it written in their terms of use). As we know from whatshisname who downloaded papers from MIT, terms of use violations can be a felony in the US. Half-measures like this global mode seem stupid to me. The content owner insist on a legalistic, to the letter interpretation of copyright. If you're going to infringe on their copyiright (or ToS, etc) anyway, why not do it for free and download a torrent? Anyway, the streaming services should just correct their IP->country mapping, unless the NZ ISP uses some kind of shared VPNish IP space.
2. Re:PIRACY! by niltiac1705 · 2013-06-27 22:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Except that national law on consumer rights trumps terms of use conditions. It's not just streaming. Another example might be buying songs from iTunes. Apple charges Australian customers more per song than US customers (and probably NZ customers too but I don't know the situation there). Apple has been asked to explain itself to an Australian Senate committee and the matter is not yet resolved. In the mean time, I don't think I'm breaking any law or moral code by maintaining a US iTunes account so that I don't have to pay higher prices. It's really no different to parallel imports of physical goods. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong by getting my friend in San Francisco to buy Clinique foundation and post it to me either. It costs twice as much in Australia for the exact same product. It is Clinique (and Apple) who are in the wrong here as far as I'm concerned.
Region encoding is illegal in NZ by Danious · 2013-06-27 22:07 · Score: 5, Informative

In NZ the Commerce Commission has long held that region encoding is illegal under NZ law. What that effectively means is that when you buy a DVD player in NZ it is already chipped by the manufacturer to play any region, and you can buy DVD's from any region and play them completely legally. Basically it's a necessary move by a country so small that we have to ride the coat-tails of other countries for content distribution.
1. Re:Region encoding is illegal in NZ by niltiac1705 · 2013-06-27 22:46 · Score: 2
  
  The former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Allan Fels, said that DVD region zoning was illegal in Australian law too. Unfortunately he was too busy dealing with Telstra's monopoly power in the telco industry to do anything about it.
2. Re:Region encoding is illegal in NZ by symbolset · 2013-06-27 22:49 · Score: 2
  
  NZ has held that whatever the US FBI wants, they get, regardless of NZ law. I'm not OK with that and I don't even live there.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
won't help with audible by 0111+1110 · 2013-06-27 22:54 · Score: 2

It's really frustrating when I can't legally purchase an audio book because of my physical location. I think audible.com and audible.co.uk use credit card numbers and credit card billing addresses in addition to IP addresses so the fascist publishers won't be fooled by this sort of thing unfortunately.

--
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
1. Re:won't help with audible by Merls+the+Sneaky · 2013-06-27 23:48 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If they won't sell it to you, pirate it. That's obviously what they want you to do.
Re:Kim Dotcom? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2013-06-27 23:01 · Score: 2

AFAIK they are still an arm of the US DOJ.
. . . and the US DOJ seems to be an arm of Hollywood . . .

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Problem: Geo-coded Ads by coinreturn · 2013-06-28 01:25 · Score: 2

But how am I to get the correct geo-coded ads? I'll be disappointed when the ad says "Meet single ladies in $fakeregion," if $fakeregion isn't where I'm sitting.
BBC iPlayer for the large UK ex-pat pop of NZ by seoras · 2013-06-28 02:30 · Score: 2

I've lived in NZ and hope to return to living there at some point. I'm from the UK.
One thing I missed while living there was the BBC iPlayer service (or maybe not ;) ).
If I had an ISP in NZ who could give me a UK IP Address I'd be laughing all the way to my TV/Laptop.
I'm sure there's other reasons why you might want to cover up your from NZ (Mr Dotcom!) but this is the best one I can think of.