Global Village... Or May Be Not?

At the beginning of the change there were jet airplanes. Letting us jump from one place to another in a matter of hours. Then automated long distance telephony services came along. It was enough to add two or three country code digits and we could here somebody on the other side of the ocean. Initially this was expensive. And these actions reaching the other end of the Planet were taken knowingly. You never boarded an intercontinental flight by chance. Dialing from Europe to Australia was never by chance either. But then mobile phones and the Internet arrived. Dialing a mobile phone you always dial the same number, regardless where the B-party is. Actually you do not know... And you do not pay any extra fees for talking to somebody who is traveling far away - it is the B-party who covers the extra roaming charges. By the way the roaming charges are relics of the past. On the Internet you never pay more for TCP packets sent across the ocean. Telephony operators use more or less the same networks that carry the Internet traffic. Yet a call from London to Tokyo costs more than a call from London to Bristol. On the Internet there is no difference where you are and where your packets are going to.

Or is there?

Technically the Internet is a uniform global network and nobody charges the traffic by the destination of transmitted packets. But for some services it does make a difference where on the globe the packets originate and end their trip. Yes, I am talking about music - related services. Take the Pandora radio, mentioned here a number of times. It is available only to the US - based subscribers. It means when you live in the US and your computer connects to the Internet on the US territory, they will let you in. But if you happen to be somewhere else, they will block you. But it does not make sense. Imagine you are a US citizen living in North America. And you are a paid Pandora subscriber. It works. Now you pack your laptop and go for a trip to London. There you arrive at the hotel, get in your room, connect to the complimentary WiFi network the hotel provides, press Play on your Pandora application only to get a message this operation is not allowed outside US. Nice, ain't it? But easy... this has not been invented by Pandora, but rather by the labels. Yes, the same people who introduced the region codes on DVD movies.

I live in Poland and I am a paid Pandora subscriber. I often travel to the US and enjoy listening to this service, as it introduces a lot of new music to me (yes, very often that leads to CD purchases - fortunately CDs do not have the region codes). So what do I do when I am back home? Well... I pretend I am in the US. How? By using a VPN connection. VPN is like a tunnel. My packets travel in that tunnel to the US and there is the point where they enter the Internet. To the Pandora servers these packets look like genuine US-based packets, so they are treated accordingly. In return the music packets sent by the Pandora are addressed to a US-based address that is the address of an entrance to the VPN tunnel to my home. I have this VPN setup on my home router (not every device can do that, but the almighty Dlink DFL-800 can), so every host on my local LAN looks to certain selected Internet services as US based. Some may say this is not legal (I am not sure to be honest, but I feel I have the right to do this, as I pay for the services I use that way). But this just helps me feel equal with my US friends... and I really do love the Pandora, so rest assured I will continue doing whatever is necessary to have this service working down here in Poland. We live in a global village... or may be not?

The second service in the "not available in your country" category is the iTunes. iTunes takes different approach. They do not look into the origin and destination of TCP/IP packets. They look at your credit card instead. You are allowed to get in only when your billing address is US-based. And this is not that easy to work around. Or is it? The iTunes store accepts gift cards. The Gift Cards are just codes you have to enter when you make a purchase. You pre-pay them in advance. My friend in the US can buy a $100 iTunes Gift Card and send it to me via email. Then I can use the Gift Card to make my purchases. What if I do not have any friends in the USA? Well.. there is always eBay or Allegro, its Polish equivalent, where there are plenty of Gift Cards available for purchase.

The moral? We do live in a global village. So dear content and service providers, please stop wasting your efforts to convince us otherwise. The world is NOT flat...