Hulu Blocks Hotspot Shield Users

Comments (25)

• thanks, a**hole.

  steve — 12:56 AM on May 7, 2009 Reply

• Hulu is unbelievably draconian — when will they get a clue? Just because they can’t figure out a business model that manages to satisfy their outdated notions, they persist in alienating the world. Somebody find a workaround!

  medusamorlock — 8:27 AM on May 7, 2009 Reply

• I think you meant “cut off your nose to satisfy contractual requirements from studios, networks and other outside content providers, thereby avoiding major lawsuits for streaming/distributing content in territories where Hulu does not legally have the right to do so.”

  That’s what you meant, right? ;)

  SR — 9:31 AM on May 7, 2009 Reply

• I just checked hulu, and seems to be working fine for me. 24, here I come!

  John Deer — 12:14 AM on May 8, 2009 Reply

• Hotspot Shield has changed its IPs and Hulu can be accessed again without problems. Unfortunately, I think it will not last as Hulu will soon update its blocking system.

  Read more on http://www.how-to-hide-ip.info/2009/05/07/hotspot-shield-can-still-be-used-to-access-hulu/

  HideIP — 9:41 PM on May 8, 2009 Reply

• I live in Canada and was able to access Hulu videos. Hotspot Shield has now switched most of their servers to White Plains, NY (instead of Englewood, Colorado). After deleting all cookies in the relevant browser, restart HSS to watch Hulu again. Proxy detection works mostly through downloaded cookies. Without them, non-US users can still view Hulu content. Read more about this workaround method here.

  patricksoon — 11:20 PM on May 8, 2009 Reply

• I want to kill you

  killer — 5:11 AM on May 9, 2009 Reply

• Great man, you’ve done it! Thanks a lot..pfff

  Oh great — 3:14 PM on May 11, 2009 Reply

• it doesn’t matter that you weren’t the first. clearly this post did it. fuck this blog, seriously.

  sincerely,

  • the rest of the world

  ugh — 9:59 AM on May 15, 2009 Reply

• Looks like Jackson fucked us again. If I ever meet that little shit in a dark alley. . .

  Richard Santini — 7:03 AM on May 16, 2009 Reply

• You write, “… others (vpn’s) should work.” Could you please give some examples. I haven’t been able to find any other free vpn’s.

  profamericain — 6:16 PM on May 27, 2009 Reply

• If you want to watch Hulu videos NOW. You can sign up for the HideMyNet VPN service. At only 5$/month, it’s a small price to pay to get access to all your favorite TV shows. Activation is instant, so you can get up and running within 5 minutes of completing payment. We have plenty of connections and bandwidth to go around. We’ll soon be opening multiple USA locations for your viewing pleasure.

  HideMyNet — 10:33 AM on May 28, 2009 Reply

• kiss my fucking ass you dickshit, wtf is wroung with you you snitch

  CR — 9:24 AM on June 24, 2009 Reply

• hulu with hotspot shield continues to work on my old laptop, but, on my new laptop (just got it last week) it doesnt work. i wonder if someone can give some ideas.

  wallace — 3:56 PM on June 26, 2009 Reply

• thanks douchebag, how about you think next time.

  som — 7:26 AM on July 23, 2009 Reply

• “…it was only a matter of time.” We’re all going to die, too – it’s only a matter of time – but some of us like to put unpleasant stuff off as long as possible and not have other people hastening the inevitable.

  Rafe — 1:02 AM on August 25, 2009 Reply

• LOL, listen to all you people assuming he’s the reason this happened. Make him the scapegoat if you’d like, but you guys are flat-fuckin-wrong in saying he was the cause of the block.

  Let me explain from a network admin standpoint how easy this is for Hulu. Hulu only has to monitor incoming IP accesses. When they see a large number of accesses coming in from individual IPs, they will flag those addresses. A normal home user in the US will give only a handful of accesses to any given website they view, including Hulu. A highly used proxy server, on the other hand, may give THOUSANDS of accesses per second. This is incredibly easy to filter out. Then they take those addresses, resolve them back to their owner, find they are a proxy, and block them.

  The ONLY way you are going to permanently gain access to Hulu from outside the US is to find someone willing to setup a private proxy for you. I personally do this myself for non-filtered web access while I’m at work. There are many technical webpages that get blocked because of our aggressive blocking schemes, and so I just installed CopSSH (freely available) on my home computer and configure it to allow “AllowTcpForwarding” and “GatewayPorts”. I SSH into it using another free program named PuTTY, and tunnel using a dynamic tunnel. Then I setup my web browser to use a SOCKS v5 proxy with no username or password. BOOM! Online to everything as if I’m at home.

  You’re welcome.

  Stop crucifying this guy, he has very little to do with what actually happened from a very rapidly growing company that apparently is working damn hard to secure copyrighted material for their sponsors.

  Naticus — 1:24 PM on September 10, 2009 Reply

• I moved to Canada from the U.S. for University and never dreamed there would be an issue with watching Hulu in Canada. I have never had any issues with Hotspot Shield so I don’t know what this post is talking about. I have never received that message from Hulu.

  Frank — 9:39 PM on September 16, 2009 Reply

• same here in the Netherlands. Hulu blocks hss.

  leon — 10:27 AM on September 24, 2009 Reply

• Ok! I have a solution, I think.
  I use IE8!
  Clear your coockies, start Hotspot Shield, then start a new window with ‘InPrivate-navigation’.
  It works for me!

  Leon — 11:13 AM on September 24, 2009 Reply

  • is that on windows or mac?

    ollie — 9:54 AM on September 25, 2009 Reply

• it’s on windows

  Leon — 5:15 AM on September 26, 2009 Reply

• Hulu is not blocking Hotspot, you gotta restart your internet and then it will work. Watching a bunch of hulu videos right now here in my apartment in the stockholm projects, love hotspot and Hulu have NOT blocked hotspot.

  Peace

  Toby — 9:32 AM on October 11, 2009 Reply

• Hi Peace,

  Good to hear that Hotspot still works. But what did you mean by restart your internet?

  Thanks

  Hbox — 6:20 AM on November 7, 2009 Reply

• There seem to be a lot of uninformed people out here. Hulu aren’t Draconian. Do you really think they WANT to limit Hulu to only American users. They do it because they HAVE to or face legal action from their content providers and others.

  Think about it – who’s most likely to put a spanner in the works of the process of getting Hulu involved in the international market? Hulu or the numerous content providers?

  If Hulu comes to the UK bang goes a lot of the revenue that the content providers could get from TV licencing, Sky subscriptions, Virgin Media Subscriptions etc.

  Of course that’s in the short term and in the long term they have a lot to gain from something like Hulu (or, on the music front, Pandora which is another service that I’d otherwise not be able to get if it weren’t for Hotspot) but of course the likes of the RIAA and the MPAA (and associated international organisations) don’t see that.

  So stop moaning about Hulu and start complaining to someone (MPs – industry fat cats – artists who don’t get the massive cut that the fat cats do and are strong potential allies, especially in the music industry) about the stranglehold that the recording and movie industries have on their content which they use to stifle creativity and reasonable freedom of content.

  America has greater choice of what they can easily view on the Internet because Americans don’t take crap from anybody. In that respect we should learn from their example.

  Tim — 6:22 AM on November 8, 2009 Reply