Sorry, but the magic days where you could watch Hulu with free proxies like Hot spot shield are over! If you're just joining the club and figuring out that Hulu is cool, great. If you're not in America, then there's a bit of a problem. Hulu is limited to viewers in the with an American IP address.

The reasons are perhaps another story, and in the end, not that important. Hulu says that they don't have the copyrights and ownership right to distribute these American TV shows to an international audience. Others, the cynical kind, say that it's all an advertising scheme and as soon as there's enough money to be made from advertising on Hulu at an international level, they will bring out Hulu International. The politics of it are unclear.

What is clear is that for a while when Hulu first came on the scene it was quite easy to watch Hulu outside the USA with an anonymous proxy server. Anonymous proxy servers are used for a variety of reasons. Businesses may use them to protect from viruses and more safely monitor who accesses their businesses computers and servers. Individuals may use it to protect their anonymity on the internet. People who want to watch Hulu abroad were using them to change their IP address. When you use an anonymous proxy server (proxy for short) your information is first channelled to a public server before being sent out again. This keeps your original location anonymous. In this way you are able to erase many (but not all) of your footprints on the internet.

However, proxies are not completely secure, and they are also very easily detected. Very soon, Hulu caught on and blocked proxies from accessing their site - including the most popular proxy called Hot Spot Shield. International fans of Hulu were very sorely disappointed.

However, there is another way to watch Hulu outside the USA. It's called a vpn. In a similar fashion, your information is first sent to another location before going off to its destination. However, its the coding and packing of your information that not only makes your internet activity safer than with a proxy, but also makes in undetectable. So now, those who are looking to watch Hulu abroad are truing to vpn's to change their IP address and stream Hulu from their home country. Because this is a will known technique and Hulu has yet to block it as they blocked proxies not long ago, I doubt that there are any plans to block the use of vpn's to stream Hulu abroad in the future.

A vpn to watch Hulu outside the USA only takes about ten minutes to download and costs anywhere from five to ten dollars a month.