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New Zealand ISP Offers "Global Mode" So Users Can Circumvent Geo-Restrictions
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."
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?
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There are no borders in the Internet. End of story.
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
If they won't sell it to you, pirate it. That's obviously what they want you to do.