I have just returned from a business trip in Europe. This is obviously nothing unusual, however, I have become attached to watching The Event as it is aired in Sweden (where I live). Now, when I was in France I discovered that watching the latest episode would not be easy.
My first attempt was by trying SVT Play. This was met by a simple message informing me of the fact that I was trying to view this content from the wrong region of the world. OK, fair enough, I suspected that this would be the case. Now, off to NBC in a foolish attempt to try an catch up with the latest episode from the official website. Result, wrong region again.
I am not sure that The Event is aired in France or put another way, my futile search attempts could not reveal what television station it would be and if so what their web streaming offer would be... No, I am not fluent enough to do the searching in French..
So, in trying to stay with the official offerings I am left without thanks to the wonderful world of geo-blocking content.
This strikes me as odd as I would have thought that series such as The Event would get a following and a steady fan-base (well, including me) that would want to watch it wherever they are in the world.
A simple ID service would have easily verified that I am actually a Swedish citizen and regardless of where I am in the world I would be able to access and view SVT Play as if I was in Sweden. This way, content is still region blocked but as a member of that region I get the freedom to take the viewing with me as I travel.
I would obviously prefer for geo-blocking to go away completely.
In an attempt to make sure I wasn't firesheeped while, like you, I was traveling in Europe last week I tried whenever I connected to a wireless network (conference, hotel) to create an SSH tunnel back home to my stationary mac with "ssh -D" (which will also create a socksd proxy).
ReplyDeleteIn addition to protecting my cookies, it also made all the streaming service I use believe I was in Sweden.
(It also falsely claimed I was twittering from my hometown while on a conference in Germany, but that I could live with)
i think the proxy grey area is a good way to get your access until you do get a universal "national citizen" subscriber id and login for the various countries. When that route is taken I'll vote with my money to pay for a subscription fee to watch BBC.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather pay for a universal proxy service until there is a world citizen viewing model available. I also like using a proxy for general WiFi access as I feel a bit more web-nonymous than just using the local hotel or cafe.