> If I'm able to set up a proxy that makes it appear to Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, etc. that my IP is from the country they accept, I will still get free music.
I've considered creating EC2 instances and using ssh tunneling to get hulu and some other US-only sites from Canada. I'm not sure if the TOS allows it (of Amazon; I'm pretty sure the TOS of hulu doesn't allow it). I'll try it out when I get back to Canada.
And not to get too off-topic, but since you and the above poster are Canadian also, I feel I have to mention CBC's music podcasts which are pretty good if you find one that fits your musical taste: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/
As as Canadian, I think there should be a market for this kind of thing. For Hulu, I wonder if using a proxy would be a major performance issue.
Limiting content based on geography is terrible but you really can't get many people to care because American's get everything and they're the biggest market.
I was suggesting this more for sites like hulu, but when I try the numbers it's actually not unrealistic.
3 pounds is roughly $4.40 USD. The cheapest EC2 instance is $0.10/hour, which would give you 44 hours for that price.
I don't know what bitrate last.fm streams at, but assuming it's 128 kbps, 44 hours would be about 2.5 GB transfer, or $0.25. edit: actually, $0.50 because the data goes in and out of the servers. I'm going off the top of my head here, but I think the rate is $0.10/GB
I figure I've listened to about 65 hours of music in the last month, so if I replaced half of that with last.fm (For example, I can't use last.fm from the gym), I'd come out ahead.
Of course, it wouldn't be worth the hassle for last.fm (killing and starting instances every time you want to play music? not for me). I may try it with hulu though, just for fun.
I've considered creating EC2 instances and using ssh tunneling to get hulu and some other US-only sites from Canada. I'm not sure if the TOS allows it (of Amazon; I'm pretty sure the TOS of hulu doesn't allow it). I'll try it out when I get back to Canada.
And not to get too off-topic, but since you and the above poster are Canadian also, I feel I have to mention CBC's music podcasts which are pretty good if you find one that fits your musical taste: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/