Need

Hola unblocker extension still works.

Scifience

Something being illegal and being a ToS violation are two very different things in most jurisdictions. Watching Hulu outside the US via a VPN may be against the ToS, but is generally not a crime (arguably, the CFAA could make it so, but I find it very, very unlikely this would hold up in such a case). ToS provisions are regularly proven unenforceable in court, and certainly do not have the force of law.

You'd be hard-pressed to convince the average person that someone paying $7.99 a month to Hulu suddenly becomes a pirate when they watch Law & Order via a VPN while on vacation in Europe.

OverThereTooMuch

Hence my use of "".
If true, even more reason why they should take every possible step to try to ensure they're only serving content up to people in the US. ^
If they tried to watch the content normally, they'd see that it wasn't allowed. If they took extra steps to be able to view the content, then yes, pirate.

gfunkdave

I always thought piracy in this sort of case implied watching without paying. If you're paying for the conten, how can there be piracy?

Scifience

While I'll concede that many people using a VPN to access Hulu are likely doing so to avoid geo-restrictions, this is by no means universally the case. For instance, many expats in China browse using a VPN 100% of the time to evade the Great Firewall and for security purposes: are they "pirates" if they access Hulu or other sites with geo-restrictions never even knowing that these exist? Or people who just use a VPN for all traffic whenever they use unsecured public Wi-Fi, even within the US?

OverThereTooMuch is correct that, by a very literal definition, this could be construed as piracy: the unauthorised use or reproduction of intellectual property. Accessing content in violation of the ToS could be considered unauthorised use, thus fitting the definition.

99% of the public doesn't use the term in this way, of course, and wouldn't really agree with this definition.

docbert

Pirates? No.
People that - based on the the T&C's - should not be accessing the service? Yes.

seawolf

Run OpenVPN on a home machine or run it on a Diskstation.

dcman

I just tested Hulu with my VPN and its working fine. My VPN uses Leaseweb for their network centers, a huge provider of seedboxes and other "questionable" services. So I'm surprised they were not blocked. Any how I pay $15/m for 300GBs of storage and VPN access so I can watch the Dodgers on MLB.tv.

dcman

A lot of higher end router,and some low end, have built in setting for run home VPNs. It took about 10mins to set up a VPN with my ASUS RT-AC66U router.

You have to remember that the upload speed of the VPN you are connecting to will be the download speed for the computer you are connecting with. At my house we have the "best" plan for my provider and we get 35Mbs down but only .75Mbs up. So if I connect to my home VPN from my lap top the best speed I could ever hope to get is .75Mbs. Add in ping time and overhead for encryption and decryption and I'm looking at a very poor connection.

deadinabsentia

Exactly. Living overseas, I want US content. I'd pay for such if it was possible to get it. But alas. I download everything, I mean everything from torrent sites.

<3 my VPN and Torrentz.eu

wco81

Reason why they have regional codes for DVDs/Blu-Rays and the reason they don't have a global music or movie stores.

There are distributors for every country and they butter Hollywood's bread.

These relationships have been around decades and apparently they maintain them even after the onset of digital downloads.

That and Hollywood is not yet prepared to go all digital download for content sales to the consumer.

I set up a VPN server on my iMac and tried HBO Go on my iPad from France and it worked. Kind of a trial and error approach but it's one option.

mrfokat

This a dumb decision by Hulu. I am an american, and I spend 6 months each year in Canada. Though have enjoyed some of the shows on Hulu, comparing to Netflix, Hulu sucks in speed and content. I just cancelled my HMA VPN and created my own VPN server following this (http://www.vpntips.com/how-to-setup-a-vpn-server/). My VPN server is super fast and apparently Hulu couldn't block it