[LINK] Hola

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

(Note .. Hola might, or might not .. be Au legal) 


"Unlock Hulu and BBC iPlayer in a click with Hola"

 January 25th, 2013  www.smh.com.au/digital-life


Rather than mess around with VPNs and proxy servers, Hola makes it easier 
than ever to watch foreign Catch Up TV services.

US Catch Up TV service Hulu is the holy grail for some people when it 
comes to online entertainment, particularly because you're not supposed 
to be able to watch it in Australia. 

Of course there are plenty workarounds to mask your location, such as 
proxy servers and US-based Virtual Private Networks. They've long been in 
a cat-and-mouse game with Hulu, but every time Hulu closes one loophole 
another seems to open.

 <http://www.hola.org>

Hola is a free service which aims to simplify the practice of geo-dodging 
by simply adding an on/off button to Chrome or Firefox. You'll also find 
standalone apps for Windows and Android. 

Hola has been around since late last year but is now expanding the number 
of sites it covers and you can probably expect it to lock horns with 
Hulu's lawyers soon.

Hola is primarily designed as a "web accelerator", speeding up your web 
access for all websites by downloading the content from other users' 
computers rather than directly from the original website. It also uses 
compression techniques to save on bandwidth, along with "patented DNS 
acceleration". 

It's a bit like P2P software, with each user sharing their cached content 
with everyone else. The more people using it, the faster it becomes. 
Content should also load faster because it's coming from someone near you 
rather than across the world

The idea of web accelerators seems a bit old-fashioned as we've all moved 
to broadband, but Hola's big appeal is that it also lets you bypass the 
geo-blocking restrictions on sites such as Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, 
Pandora, CBS, Fox and ITV. Hola's designers are open to adding extra 
sites and plan to introduce the ability to customise your own list. 

Personally I'd like to add YouTube US, where you'll find a wide range of 
extra movies and TV shows which aren't available to Australian YouTube 
users.

At the moment the Hola Windows application offers both web acceleration 
and geo-dodging, while the browser plugins only offer geo-dodging and the 
Android app only offers web acceleration. I have to admit that talk of 
web acceleration makes me suspicious and there was a time when such a 
phrase screamed spyware, but it all seems above board.

Hola doesn't rely on a Virtual Private Network or a full proxy server. 

Instead it relies on a selective proxy server system which only targets 
specific domains. When you try to visit a page on Hulu, that request is 
redirected to the Hola network (not that you notice anything different on 
the front end). For all other internet traffic it's business as usual.

The beauty of Hola is that your other internet traffic isn't impeded in 
any way, nor does Hola impact on other applications. You don't need to 
change your IP address or DNS server, nor do you need to worry about 
Australian servers suddenly treating you as a foreigner. 

Of course if you want to geo-dodge on devices which won't run the Hola 
plugin, such as a media player or games console, then a DNS-based service 
such as Unblock Us might still be your best bet.

UnblockUs $4.99 a month www.unblock-us.com
WiTopia from $4 a month www.witopia.net

Hola's P2P-style design means, like BitTorrent, it can't be shut down 
because there's no central server to attack. The trade-off is that you're 
uploading content to other users, which could count towards your monthly 
limit, but Hola's designers claim that the bandwidth you save due to 
compression techniques should offset this. 

Using the browser plug-in to geo-dodge doesn't seem to involve sharing 
content with other users, so many people might not see the need to 
install the full desktop application. Often you only need to enable geo-
dodging to start a video streaming, once it's playing you've already 
passed the geo-check so it will happily keep playing. 

Is it legal to use Hola? That's a grey area. Some people would argue that 
it's more legal than using BitTorrent, although BitTorrent will still 
offer better picture quality and less advertising than Catch Up TV 
services. 

<http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-
go/unlock-hulu-and-bbc-iplayer-in-a-click-with-hola-20130124-
2d8zu.html#ixzz2IzJUdkHQ>
--

Cheers,
Stephen

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