It seems Canadians may no longer be the second-class citizens on the
Internet they once were. At least, that’s certainly how I felt watching last week’s season premiere of Lost on CTV’s website.
See, for sometime sites like Hulu have existed, providing a free and legal way to watch TV shows online and have gotten plenty of positive press. That is, positive press that’s frustrating to read to anyone outside of the U.S. since upon visiting the sites and trying to play a video, all that comes up is a black screen and a message indicating that “You must be inside the United States to watch this video.”
Now did this keep foreigners from watching television shows? Of course not. Many just took a trip to the back alleys of the Internet and grabbed their favourite shows from less-than-legal sources, adding to piracy statistics.
It’s been said often that the way to stop piracy is to beat them at their own game.
What anyone outside the US sees when trying to access Hulu
To the television industry’s credit, they had some of the first major companies to get on-board with that idea (after a round of suing Google, of course) but sadly it’s taken even longer to move outside of their own country.
It is nice to see that we here in Canada are being thrown a few bones though it’d be nice if we had a few more options. Like being able to rent movies on the PlayStation 3, but that’s a rant for another time.
