
Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada - mcrider
http://cantada.ca
======
OmarIsmail
A lot of these issues can be resolved for $5/month and less than that if
you're willing to setup your own private server.

<http://www.unblock-us.com/> lets you access American Netflix, Hulu, Pandora,
ESPN3, etc etc. I'm not affiliated with them, but been using the service the
past couple of months and it works amazingly. In fact I'm using American
Netflix on my Xbox 360 as we speak. $5/month is a heck of a lot cheaper than
moving to the states and I get to keep the free health care.

~~~
gojomo
Certainly such a service could be even cheaper with official sponsorship and
universal coverage.

Perhaps Canadians can lobby their MPs to institute a national system providing
every Canadian with a United States IP address. The Single-Payer-Proxy-System
– or in French, Proxy Système à Payeur Unique (SPPS-PSPU). There's really no
reason for the nation to stand for this sort of Canadophobic discrimination.
Indeed, where are the national and provincial Human Rights Commissions on this
important issue?

~~~
enjo
I'd have to imagine that'd violate some sort of treaty. That's a huge part of
the issues. These sort of regional restrictions are all wrapped up in a mess
of various treaties and international agreements that Canada could not easily
extricate themselves from.

~~~
redthrowaway
The problem isn't treaties, but distribution rights. US firms don't distribute
content in Canada, but have Canadian subsidiaries or partners which do so.
This means agreements between service providers and rights owners signed in
the states aren't generally valid in Canada.

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Maciek416
This is a great idea.

This goes beyond just which digital services you can't get in Canada, but also
many other types of products which aren't offered here for whatever reason.
Models of automobiles, consumer electronics (TVs in particular, with sparser
ranges of models), etc.

Our currency routinely reaches or exceeds par with the US dollar, and yet many
products are dramatically more expensive than you'd expect to be explained
simply by currency differences alone (I guess there are a lot of other issues
at play, but it doesn't help the widespread impression that we're getting
screwed).

It would be awesome of your project also tracked how much more expensive
products and/or services are in Canada than in the US.

------
nuclear_eclipse
I know it's not a big name consumer service, but cperciva's Tarsnap backup
service is not available to Canadians because he doesn't want to deal with
Canadian taxes.

~~~
jackowayed
Which is funny since he lives in Canada.

~~~
acangiano
Canadian taxes can be a pain in the rear. I assume cperciva doesn't want to
deal with collecting and remitting the HST for Canadian customers.

~~~
clscott
Tracking GST/HST isn't that big of a deal, and you are only required to do so
once your annual revenues exceed $30K.

<http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gp/rc4022/README.html>

------
jeza
Similar story here in Australia. Not surprising given the similarity between
the two countries (though I note there are also some significant differences
as well). Probably the most notable is the relatively small population
compared to say the US. You'd think Canada actually has the greater advantage
though.

What annoys me the most, however, is that the US and Australian governments
allegedly signed a free trade agreement. Copyright laws were altered here to
be more compatible with the US, though it has certainly not altered the
extortion sought by distributors. Many US e-commerce sites including Amazon
for non-book/dvd products won't post to Australia. I'm pretty sure they'll
post to US territories such as Guan which isn't far off the Australian coast.
Close enough that some Australian company run fibre there, to take advantage
of surplus capacity they had. So free trade agreements don't really change
much for consumers it seems (however, it should in theory reduce barriers for
Australian companies to sell in the US and vice versa).

~~~
yardie
I haven't been able to figure out why electronics can't be shipped
internationally through Amazon either. The closest guess I can make has to do
with FCC, and other countries' equivalent, requirements and interference. For
example 802.11 uses different bands depending on what country it's licensed
in. US is channels 1-12, but France for example goes 1-14.

I figure the OEM nor Amazon wants to indemnify the device from causing
interference in countries it's not designed to work in. On the other hand I
have no problem buying whatever the hell I want from some chinese stores.

~~~
notahacker
There are also import/export tax issues, not to mention potential conflicts
with prices set by local Amazon operations.

------
sportsTAKES
Zappos just shut down their service to Canada:

[http://business.transworld.net/59733/news/zappos-
discontinui...](http://business.transworld.net/59733/news/zappos-
discontinuing-shipments-to-canada/)

------
BoppreH
You think that's bad? Try a third world country, like Brazil. Not only the
_services_ are not available, but the hardware itself costs 4x more.

I loved the initiative, but it could be much better if it weren't tied to just
Canada.

------
noarchy
I wouldn't call it a "service", per se, but you cannot buy a Kindle from
Amazon.ca. You can, however (and this is more on-topic), buy books for it, but
the selection is limited.

Edit: I should add that a lot of the things that are available on Amazon.com
(the US site) won't ship to Canada. You don't even get the option to pay for
extra shipping charges; it just won't ship, period.

Edit 2: An article about Amazon's efforts to deal with the "cultural
protection rules" here, among other things (like foreign ownership issues):
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/amazon-
given-g...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/amazon-given-green-
light-to-set-up-shop-in-canada/article1532080/)

~~~
joelhaasnoot
That's crazy, because the do ship the Kindle to Europe. There too aren't a lot
of books available due to rights issues, but still. What's the problem with
the Kindle?

~~~
jarek
You can buy the Kindle from Amazon.com, just not local in .ca. And yeah the
book selection.

------
Skalman
A little design feedback: With my 15.4 inch screen I could only see the first
service, so I initially assumed that you were for some reason having ads for
amazon cloud drive, and I also noticed an empty site forum (which I now
believe is the forum specific to that service). It took me a great while to
understand that I should be scrolling down - the page looked sort of complete
as it was.

You really need a more compact layout: If you want me to know what's not
available in Canada, why can't I have the whole list at once? (I realize you
might want the forum and news stuff - but perhaps cut a lot of the unnecessary
whitespace (while still trying to keep the design spacious! :-) ).

~~~
mcrider
Thanks! I'm no designer so any feedback there is much appreciated. I've
compacted things a bit, but will continue to tweak it.

I'm thinking I'll also add a drop-down menu around the top to let users jump
to a service quickly (I've already got lots of feedback for other services to
add so the page will just be getting longer).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Also it doesn't render right in IE 8? Font progressively larger for each entry
until its a huge blur

------
Mark_B
Granted, I'm not in Canada, but I'd be curious to see why a particular service
isn't available.

~~~
verysimple
Notice that many of these services offer copyrighted contents online. I think
the primary issues they had with doing business outside the U.S. is that there
are less copyrighted laws to adequately protect the material and that sort of
business in those countries. It would also be notoriously hard to sue people
who abuse them.

Other services such as telecom have to deal with Canadian collusion and
protectionism towards the readily established telcorps. It's an uphill battle.
One that Canadians have been paying the price for, with high wireless phone
bills, high internet fees and the recent attempt at imposing Usage-Based
Billing.

~~~
jacques_chester
Protection is not the problem. The problem is that each jurisdiction is a
different sales market for copyright holders. While selling into Canada,
Australia etc the sellers may have given over a total copyright license, or
there might be terms trying to prevent "leakage" from the home market and so
on.

For example, as an Australian, I used to be able to watch whole episodes of
Stewart & Colbert via the website. Then one of the local cable companies got
the Australian rights to those shows and blam, no more easily-watched episodes
for me.

~~~
jarek
And in a lot of cases it simply doesn't make sense to deal with a whole new
regulatory system for a 10% bump in potential market size.

~~~
thechangelog
Not sure why you got downvotes for this. This is exactly my take, too. The
regulatory hurdles for online producers are significant and Canada is a small
market relative to the United States.

As my previous comment indicated I know the hurt of learning about a product
and finding out it's unavailable here. However, I understand the economics at
work and feel that–while they're frustrating–they're totally understandable.

------
riobard
One thing I just hate the most being in Canada: many interesting stuff on
Amazon.com does not ship to Canada, and Amazon.ca gets like nothing.

~~~
noarchy
This is a point that I made in my own post. Amazon has been quite restricted
in what they can and cannot do in Canada.

------
mansr
Is Canada any worse off than Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa in this
regard?

~~~
prawn
Probably not, but in this case I imagine it was scratching a personal itch and
no other country in the world starts with "can" - I imagine that bit really
rubs it in the face of Canadians. I'm sure other copycats will emerge as
people think up amusing domain options.

~~~
hardy263
No, it's probably not because our country starts with "can"

The real itch is that some of these services are available as long as I drive
an hour south and get past the border and find open wi-fi.

Pretend you're an avid soccer fan. It's as if the world cup was on TV, and
your friends are all crowding around it. All you get is the commentary and
cheering when the ball is scored, but you can't actually see the game, since
they're blocking the TV. And then when your friends ask you "Wasn't that a
great game?", and all you can say is "Uhh...I think so?"

It's so close, yet so far.

~~~
jarek
Incidentally the most recent World Cup was available for free streaming in
Canada from CBC.

------
dmix
Heres one: Last.fm's iphone app is not available in Canada.

~~~
mitjak
But you can easily get it by setting up a US iTunes account which is slightly
tricky but doable without a US credit or gift card.

Edit: [http://www.simonblog.com/2009/04/14/how-to-register-an-
itune...](http://www.simonblog.com/2009/04/14/how-to-register-an-itunes-app-
store-account-without-credit-card/)

~~~
iaskwhy
This only gets you access to free apps, right?

~~~
mitjak
Indeed.

------
sjs
Poor man's SSL VPN

    
    
      ssh -D 9050 yourbox.net
    

and set your system's SOCKS proxy to localhost:9050

~~~
rb2k_
sadly Flash will try a direct socket connection first and just ignore your
system's proxy settings...

~~~
pmjordan
On OSX this will work for some Flash video implementations, but not others.
(BBC iPlayer website: yes, Desktop: no; other UK TV channels: no) You can use
<https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle> to transparently proxy _all_ TCP
connections (to whitelisted or non-blacklisted IPs) though. OSX and Linux
only, though.

~~~
rb2k_
The BBC iPlayer website is pretty easy to fool. I just set up a squid proxy on
a UK VPS and created a .pac file that redirects all _bbc.co.uk_ requests. The
final video stream won't be on that domain, so it will just go over the
"normal" connection.

~~~
pmjordan
Curious. I didn't realise the stream itself wasn't IP-restricted. This could
solve issues with flaky VPS bandwidth.

------
mtw
there are more: Google checkout is not available for sellers, zappos (they
just closed their canadian store), unlimited internet etc.

~~~
moblivu
Unlimited internet is, but for enterprises only.

~~~
GoodIntentions
Teksavvy has unlimited plans for residential.

~~~
yuhong
Yea, it is another matter altogether.

------
nolanw
Great idea!

Minor note: the "Think something should be here? Contact us about it." link
text was very hard to read (Chrome 10, OS X). Maybe it's too small for that
font and weight.

------
pdaviesa
Well, you Canadians may not have Hulu, Skypein numbers, or full Netflix, but
your beer does have a higher alcohol content - this may be a fair trade.

~~~
huge_ness
yes, but we do have to pay for that extra percent or two. Our beer costs twice
the American price.

I got a startup idea, why not compare all the things americans have that
canadians don't and vise versa (aside from tech)...haha

who can fund it? I see zero's all over the place

------
zmn
Here's a list of some sites that are not available in Belgium. I assume that a
lot of these sites are not available in Canada (and most other parts of the
world) either:

UK Services:

BBC Iplayer ITV 4OnDemand DemandFive Sky TVCatchup ZATTOO

US Services:

Hulu: www.hulu.com NBC: www.nbc.com ABC: www.abc.com Fox: www.fox.com The WB:
www.thewb.com The CW: www.cwtv.com USA Network: www.usanetwork.com

France Services:

M6replay: www.M6replay.fr

Netherlands Services: RTL: Rtl.nl

------
ianlevesque
I have a suggestion. mcrider, why don't you allow interested Canadian users to
"vote" for support of these services. It would become an activism platform of
sorts that way. If Zappos for example sees that 2 million canadians want to
buy their shoes, they have an incentive to add support!

------
mdpm
compared to !north_america, you're getting off lightly.

------
AlexC04
I'm interested in a bit more about your choices with respect to the
implementation of project. Is it a CMS? Wordpress? Did you code it yourself?
Flat HTML? Is there anything dynamic about it or did you just put a bunch of
stuff up on a page and a domain?

Incidentally, "suggest a link" is broken unless you submit a fully qualified
domain name. (I just sent <http://example.com> to you)

~~~
mcrider
I used a html pack from [http://sickdesigner.com/resources/HTML5-starter-
pack/index.h...](http://sickdesigner.com/resources/HTML5-starter-
pack/index.html) then added in my own PHP. I wanted to automate as much as
possible any future upkeep of this site, so its very much dynamically
generated, with a bunch of forms to add data to the back end. I also use
BBPress as forum software, which is turning out to be pretty nice so far.

------
jasonlotito
Surprised to see Netflix on there. I'm assuming you're referring to the
streaming version. Considering Canada received it first, and the streaming
version's only problem has to do with issues beyond Netflix's control.
Basically, if you are going to include Netflix, you have to include every
retailer who deals with digital distribution of copyrighted goods like Apple
and Amazon as well.

------
dcosson
Are copyright laws more strict in Canada? Or are royalties a lot higher? There
seem to be primarily music/video content services on the list.

~~~
nolanw
As far as I can tell, it's a combination of the licensing being different (as
in the terms of your license probably only cover the United States to start),
and the CRTC's content laws and other regulations being annoying enough not to
bother with considering our relatively smaller market size.

(I think it's considerably easier to go from Canada to the US than in the
opposite direction.)

~~~
recurrie
CRTC Canadian content regulations don't apply to the internet.

~~~
nolanw
Good call, I had no idea.

Looking into it, apparently the CRTC believes that internet audio and video
broadcasting services are under its jurisdiction, but it has exempted all such
services from regulation. The notice is at
<http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1999/PB99-197.htm>.

------
xinsight
The classic version of this is:

<http://availableincanada.com/>

------
jschuur
Away for Canadians (based on geo IP) to be able to log that they want access
to this service would be great. I don't expect that this kind of petition is
going to be effective, but the relative number of votes between each service
would be nice.

------
kleiba
For Germany it's similar, but add almost all music videos from major labels on
youtube.

------
wittjeff
Great idea! Are you expecting the forum to be used for references to the next
best alternatives that are available in Canada? That's what immediately comes
to mind. But then I wonder if those topics would quickly scroll off the list.

------
colinprince
tarsnap is not available to canadians :(

(info: developer of tarsnap is canadian, he has his reasons)

~~~
CrazedGeek
For the curious: <http://www.tarsnap.com/legal-why.html#NOCANADIANS>

------
elvirs
Those are just a few of services unavailable not only in Canada but also in
most of the world, which sucks big time and which is one of the main reasons
why I want to move to the States, especially Silicon Valley.

~~~
city41
A proxy wouldn't fix the issue?

~~~
elvirs
how do you fix the issue of getting Google Voice on your phone with a proxy?

~~~
elai
Find a generic voip provider with incoming numbers, priority call forwarding,
voicemail saved as mp3 files and emailed to you? All you'd be missing is the
texting and voicemail transcription, but your not missing much from that.

------
Dramatize
You should clone the site and swap Canada with Australia, would be about
right.

~~~
caf
There are a few differences - you can get Australian Sype-In numbers, and I
don't think you can get any Netflix access at all.

------
martinshen
How about real nationwide coverage. Stupid Rogers monopoly

------
remi
That's great, but there was already <http://availableincanada.com/>.

~~~
bruceboughton
What a terrible interface.

------
MichaelGG
It would be cool to note if you can get around a service with a proxy or US
billing address.

------
markchristian
This is the most depressing weekend project I've ever seen here.

Keep up the good work, though. :)

------
zabraxias
Can add woot.com to the list of online retailers who won't ship to Canada.

------
cmer
To be fair, Skype is available in Canada. Only Skype-in numbers aren't.

~~~
brackin
No Skypein numbers? How? I swear it's available in a lot of obscure countries?
And Canada is far from that, you'd expect it to have this.

~~~
CountSessine
No one knows, and neither Skype nor Industry Canada nor the CRTC are saying
anything.

------
Tudisco
How about alternatives to services that are in Canada.

------
kulpreet
Wow. After reading this, I actually feel bad for Canadians. We Americans
definitely take so much for granted.

------
aphexairlines
Looks like Jacan't.

