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Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada
- BoppreH 16y agoYou 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.
- Maciek416 16y agoThis 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.
- cmer 16y agoTo be fair, Skype is available in Canada. Only Skype-in numbers aren't.
- marcc 16y agoThanks for clarifying that. That was the only one which really surprised me to see on that list.
- mcrider 16y agoThanks -- I couldn't find a SkypeIn logo, so I should've clarified the text. I've just updated it.
- brackin 16y agoNo 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 16y agoNo one knows, and neither Skype nor Industry Canada nor the CRTC are saying anything.
- oniTony 16y agoTo be even more precise, Canadian SkypeIn numbers are not available in Canada. I've certainly had a US number that worked in Canada (makes sense for receiving calls from America).
- Skalman 16y agoA 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 16y agoThanks! 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 16y agoAlso it doesn't render right in IE 8? Font progressively larger for each entry until its a huge blur
- dcosson 16y agoAre 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 16y agoAs 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 16y agoCRTC Canadian content regulations don't apply to the internet.
- nolanw 16y agoGood 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 http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1999/PB99-197.htm.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Mark_B 16y agoGranted, I'm not in Canada, but I'd be curious to see why a particular service isn't available.
- verysimple 16y agoNotice 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 16y agoProtection 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 16y agoAnd 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 16y agoNot 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.
- nolanw 16y agoGreat 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.
- mtw 16y agothere are more: Google checkout is not available for sellers, zappos (they just closed their canadian store), unlimited internet etc.
- moblivu 16y agoUnlimited internet is, but for enterprises only.
- GoodIntentions 16y agoTeksavvy has unlimited plans for residential.
- yuhong 16y agoYea, it is another matter altogether.
- wittjeff 16y agoGreat 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.
- mansr 16y agoIs Canada any worse off than Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa in this regard?
- thechangelog 16y agoI'm sure it's about the same. However, since we Canadians get such a huge amount of our media from the US it's likely more of a disappointment.
- a-US-er 16y agoHowever, since we Canadians get such a huge amount of our media from the US a fact about which Canadians and other non-Americans never seem to tire of complaining, until the day they discover that the e-spigot has been shut-off for them, then it's whambulance time: "Where are my American TV shows and movies!"
- thechangelog 16y agoCan you explain that differently? I've read your comment a few times and haven't been able to grasp it. My comment, based on a possibly faulty interpretation of your comment: I don't feel entitled to get US media as a Canadian. It's just extremely prevalent. Our country watches CSI at the same time yours does, and American Idol, and pretty much everything else. So we get used to feeling like members of the US media market. Sure we have our Rick Mercer Report, et al, but the dominant media is American. I certainly didn't mean to complain. I understand that negotiating distributions rights for a country a tenth the size isn't high on the priority list of US distributors. What I was trying to say is that it catches us of guard (though less and less frequently) to find that for online services we are often excluded when for so much of our daily media lives we are full-fledged, practicing Americans.
- a-US-er 16y agoYou hear non-Americans complaining constantly about America's "cultural imperialism," that they're inundated with American TV shows and movies of low quality, but then as soon as they're unable to get their fix of American media, (or least not able to get it as easily), they start to complain: "Why isn't Hulu available in my country!?"
- OmarIsmail 16y agoA 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/ 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.
- cmer 16y agoI've been using StrongVPN, a similar service, with great success.
- mbesto 16y agoI run OpenVPN via Linode for $20/month. I've got about 5 friends on it so we just split the costs. http://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ http://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/
- cmer 16y agoI started out using OpenVPN as well. However, the speed and latency was always very bad even though my VPS connection is fast. After spending too much time trying to figure it out, I decided to just spend just $55/year and use StrongVPN. Added bonus, I can use StrongVPN on my iPad/iPhone!
- mbesto 16y agoStrongVPN looks pretty good. Also easier to support other VPN connections out of the box (i.e. through Win standard VPN and not have to install OpenVPN, as well as via iPhone). Thanks for the suggestion.
- gojomo 16y agoCertainly 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?
- colinprince 16y agotarsnap is not available to canadians :( (info: developer of tarsnap is canadian, he has his reasons)
- CrazedGeek 16y agoFor the curious: http://www.tarsnap.com/legal-why.html#NOCANADIANS http://www.tarsnap.com/legal-why.html#NOCANADIANS
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoI 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 16y agoWhich is funny since he lives in Canada.
- acangiano 16y agoCanadian 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 16y agoTracking 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 http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gp/rc4022/README.html
- kulpreet 16y agoWow. After reading this, I actually feel bad for Canadians. We Americans definitely take so much for granted.
- elvirs 16y agoThose 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 16y agoA proxy wouldn't fix the issue?
- verysimple 16y agoand would probably be cheaper.
- elvirs 16y agohow do you fix the issue of getting Google Voice on your phone with a proxy?
- elai 16y agoFind 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 16y agoYou should clone the site and swap Canada with Australia, would be about right.
- caf 16y agoThere are a few differences - you can get Australian Sype-In numbers, and I don't think you can get any Netflix access at all.
- dmix 16y agoHeres one: Last.fm's iphone app is not available in Canada.
- mitjak 16y agoBut 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-itunes-app-store-account-without-credit-card/ http://www.simonblog.com/2009/04/14/how-to-register-an-itune...
- MichaelGG 16y agoIt would be cool to note if you can get around a service with a proxy or US billing address.
- mdpm 16y agocompared to !north_america, you're getting off lightly.
- martinshen 16y agoHow about real nationwide coverage. Stupid Rogers monopoly
- noarchy 16y agoI 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-green-light-to-set-up-shop-in-canada/article1532080/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/amazon-given-g...
- joelhaasnoot 16y agoThat'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 16y agoYou can buy the Kindle from Amazon.com, just not local in .ca. And yeah the book selection.
- jleyank 16y agoI just checked, and Amazon says it can (now) ship Kindle to Canada. Customs duties, etc, but they can ship. FYI.
- noarchy 16y agoMy original comment was about Amazon.ca, not Amazon.com. If you try to buy the Kindle via Amazon.ca, you get sent to a .com site. The Canadian site itself won't sell it, as it still must be imported. For whatever reason, they don't want to stock it in their Canadian warehouses. Maybe the duties on it are more than they want to swallow? I figure they'd pass that cost along, and not worry about it, but perhaps I am wrong.
- 16y ago
- jschuur 16y agoAway 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.
- pdaviesa 16y agoWell, 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.
- amb 16y agoWhy are we upvoting this comment? It adds no value.
- huge_ness 16y agoyes, 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
- sportsTAKES 16y agoZappos just shut down their service to Canada: http://business.transworld.net/59733/news/zappos-discontinuing-shipments-to-canada/ http://business.transworld.net/59733/news/zappos-discontinui...
- riobard 16y agoOne 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 16y agoThis is a point that I made in my own post. Amazon has been quite restricted in what they can and cannot do in Canada.
- aphexairlines 16y agoLooks like Jacan't.
- xinsight 16y agoThe classic version of this is: http://availableincanada.com/ http://availableincanada.com/
- sjs 16y agoPoor man's SSL VPN ssh -D 9050 yourbox.net and set your system's SOCKS proxy to localhost:9050
- rb2k_ 16y agosadly Flash will try a direct socket connection first and just ignore your system's proxy settings...
- pmjordan 16y agoOn 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 https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle to transparently proxy all TCP connections (to whitelisted or non-blacklisted IPs) though. OSX and Linux only, though.
- rb2k_ 16y agoThe 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 16y agoCurious. I didn't realise the stream itself wasn't IP-restricted. This could solve issues with flaky VPS bandwidth.
- tomjen3 16y agoI didn't know that but it can't be that hard to fix -- all you would have to do would be to disallow outgoing port 80 connections with the firewall, right?
- sjs 16y agoIt works for me on some sites, on OS X in Canada. I watch Hulu and YouTube videos only available in the US with that method. YMMV.
- zmn 16y agoHere'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
- markchristian 16y agoThis is the most depressing weekend project I've ever seen here. Keep up the good work, though. :)
- kleiba 16y agoFor Germany it's similar, but add almost all music videos from major labels on youtube.
- zabraxias 16y agoCan add woot.com to the list of online retailers who won't ship to Canada.
- Tudisco 16y agoHow about alternatives to services that are in Canada.
- jeza 16y agoSimilar 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 16y agoI 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 16y agoThere are also import/export tax issues, not to mention potential conflicts with prices set by local Amazon operations.
- remi 16y agoThat's great, but there was already http://availableincanada.com/ http://availableincanada.com/.
- bruceboughton 16y agoWhat a terrible interface.
- jasonlotito 16y agoSurprised 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.
- AlexC04 16y agoI'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 http://example.com to you)
- mcrider 16y agoI used a html pack from http://sickdesigner.com/resources/HTML5-starter-pack/index.html http://sickdesigner.com/resources/HTML5-starter-pack/index.h... 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.
- ianlevesque 16y agoI 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!