Beating the System

In the four years since we moved to Mexico nearly fulltime, I have been extolling the virtues of living in this beautiful country … the people, the culture, the lifestyle, the climate.  But there is the other side of living in Mexico that at times can be frustrating.  It mainly has to do with availability of products, mostly those things we get used to living with in America.  And that includes entertainment.

While satellite TV (with hundreds of English channels, many in HD) is widely available, movies often take months to get here.  Also, there are many media companies based in the US that block their content outside the country’s borders.  This includes streaming video services such as Netflix and Hulu, as well as streaming audio programs such as Pandora and CBS Radio stations.   If you Google it, you’ll find several forums where ex-pats living around the world lament the loss of entertainment, particularly online entertainment.  Enter “The Box.”

A friend of mine first sent me the link about it earlier this year.  It is basically a router that you can hook up to your Mexican modem, and with a few adjustments and a small annual fee, you can trick entertainment providers into thinking that you are in the United States.  Skeptical at first, I decided to try it out.  I ordered the $89 router, paid the $60 annual fee, and three months ago, set it up.  Since then, the world of online entertainment (at least the US view of the world of entertainment) has opened wide up.   As I write this, sipping my morning coffee, I am listening to K-EARTH from Los Angeles, a station that until I got “The Box” posted on its website that it was sorry but I was out of the country and not eligible to listen to their programming.  They now think I am in San Diego, or sometimes Austin, or sometimes Phoenix, depending on what server I want my router to access.

I was telling my tech-savvy nephew about the problem here, and the solution.  He was somewhat amazed that his uncle who isn’t real computer literate was able to accomplish this tremendous feat (of course I did it with the help of a friend who knows about these things better than I do). 

Is it illegal?   There may be some licensing questions about the availability of content outside the US, but basically I am just using a conduit to access material that is free to Americans (and I am an American).  For the pay material (such as Netflix), I do pay my monthly subscription.  So there is no thievery involved.  There are other “pirate” sites where much of the same material is available, but there you pay no fees, and the security of the connection is questionable.  I don’t use them.  With what I am doing, the artists get paid (if it is a pay site like Netflix) or they get credit for song plays (for sites such as Pandora).  

It’s not a perfect system.  The Internet here through Telmex can be slow, and does drop out from time to time.  But, it works for the most part.  And is just one more challenge we have overcome living in a third world country.  Those of you who have never done it may wonder, why?  Those of you who have know why.