I got an email today from Tim Westergren of Pandora Internet Radio. Sadly, this internet service will be cut off to Canadians as of May 16. It's all about licensing laws. You can read about it at the Pandora Blog.
While Pandora never was available in Canada really, all you needed was a US zip code (hint, ask a friend for his/her zipcode, or look up any US mailing address and use that one). Now Pandora has to own up to being able to detect users' IP addresses, and thus able to deny access based on that.
I'll miss finding out about music that is like the music I like. I'll miss listening to it while I poke around on the internet or post my blog. I hope they find a way to bring Pandora to Canada legally.
If you haven't listened yet, you still have 1 day to enjoy the music genome project that is Pandora.
question: is there a workaround, I wonder?
mompoet - still listening
1 comment:
mompoet wrote:
"is there a workaround, I wonder?"
I can think of one, but it would cost money.
(1) Get a dialup Internet account in the USA. My wife and I used to have one with Earthlink, costing US$10 per month. We used it with our laptop when on multi-day trips within the USA. Because Telus, with whom we have an ADSL account, now provides US dialup service for its customers using a 1-800 number at C$2 per hour, we cancelled the Earthlink account. I do not know about current availability, but I suspect that such accounts are still available but at higher cost than US$10 per month. We paid for our US Earthlink account, when we had it, using a US credit card (issued by a US bank) and we used as our address a post office box address in a US border town, an address we've had for years and which we use for US snail mail.
(2) Earthlink provided both 1-800 number access the use of which involved a surcharge over and above the US$10 per month (and which probably only worked in the USA; we never tried it from Canada) and many local numbers in literally hundreds of US cities. If we were in a motel in say Cincinnati, Ohio we would use the local dialup number which, except for possible motel local-call charges, didn't cost money to use. Those local numbers can certainly be dialed from within Canada, but of course they then become long-distance calls.
(3) If dialed into either the 1-800 number or a local number, the IP address you then receive from Earthlink will be a US IP address.
(4) Caution: If the music from Pandora is served up at any reasonable speed and fidelity, it's not going to work very well, or at all, through a dialup connection, but you could try.
(5) There are other US companies besides Earthlink providing dialup Internet service. We used Earthlink at the time because it then gave the best deal we could find. That may or may not now be the case.
mompoet's dad, who has been figuring out ways to end-run things for nearly 72 years
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