Hulu's cat-and-mouse game of preventing "unwanted" access to their popular video streaming service continues, this time with international viewers being thwarted once again after a successful workaround had been implemented (for a recap on the earlier "no content for you" kerfuffle with Boxee, check out our earlier column on the subject). For licensing reasons, Hulu content is officially open only to U.S. viewers, but for months a number of services were able to fool Hulu into thinking overseas visitors were using U.S.-based IP addresses. 

When the site changed its detection algorithms to add location-based filtering, effectively knocking those solutions out, a few sites offering virtual private network services, such as Hotspot Shield, were still being used successfully to fool Hulu with anonymous IPs — until yesterday. That's when the video site changed its detection methods once again to block anonymous proxy services, throwing up the above message to potential international viewers.

Now mind you, we get that licensing issues are complex enough just within the U.S. and even more complex internationally, and the film and television industries need some time to sort it all out. What we don't entirely understand yet is why, with almost all major networks now on board except CBS, they aren't charging us for the awesome celestial on-demand video service they've put together in order to generate the extra revenue needed to solve those issues.

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