14 DAY TRIAL // Hulu is one of the most popular movie and TV streaming services in the United States and it seems like the company really doesn’t want its services to be available outside its clearly set country borders. In order to do this, the company started blocking VPN users this week.
The move, TorrentFreak points out, seeks to prevent online pirates from the world from accessing videos without Hulu’s explicit permission. At the same time, this could seriously backfire and block access to legitimate users who simply use VPN tools to surf the web securely.
VPN tools allow anyone to bypass geographical restrictions set online by connecting to the sites through an IP address based in the United States. Such methods are often used to bypass local ISP restrictions, or to view blocked content, including on sites such as YouTube.
Hulu seems to be trying to deal with all these users and has started to block off visitors who access the site through an IP address that’s linked to a VPN service that is also used by hundreds of thousands of citizens from the United States.
The block list includes IP ranges of all major VPN services, which means that there are very few options left out there for those who want to hide their identities online for whatever purpose.
“Based on your IP-address, we noticed that you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S. you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu,” reads a note displayed to all visitors using a VPN tool.
The blockade was quickly noticed by users even if there had been no formal announcement regarding the new restrictions. It does seem like the service wants to lock out all foreign users, a trend that appears to be quite widespread among TV networks and movie outlets in the United States, which forget or choose to ignore the fact that there’s a whole world outside the States.
The entertainment industry has been known to complain about VPN users who choose to watch Netflix from the United States for instance, instead of some local solution or another.
“Private Internet Access exists to protect the privacy of netizens everywhere. Many of our customers leave their Private Internet Access accounts enabled 24/7/365. It is unfortunate that Hulu is blocking VPN service IPs,” said Andrew Lee, CEO of private Internet access, one VPN service blocked by Hulu.