can i spoof a UK address to buy a MP3 song sold only in the UK?

[LCHIEN]

I wanted to buy a mp3 song - but its not available on itunes or amazon.
it's a UK release, not sold in the US.

So I finally found it on amazon.uk.co, the counterpart to amazon.com in the US.
So i registered with amazon.uk.co using my normal name and stuff and the song was .69 pound sterling. When i clicked buy it, it proceeded to tell me it was not available for sale in my geographic area.
Did it decide that from my IP address, or my email address or what?

is there a simple way to spoof it so it thinks I'm in the UK, or should i just look for a friend in the UK to buy it for me and mail it?

I need a Proxy server in the UK?

[herb fellows]

Can we assume this is a download as opposed to a physical mailing?

That is really weird. I would have thought that wouldn't be a problem.
If it's a mailing situation,they might not have the ability to change to a foreign mailing rate if it wasn't programmed in to begin with, but a download? I really don't get that.
if you need it mailed and can't hook up with Ray or another person, pm me, my brother lives in Gloucester.

[atgcpaul]

Did it decide that from my IP address, or my email address or what?

They can definitely tell from your IP address. The map app on my iPod knows
where I am because someone has mapped my router's signal to my house on
Google maps. Pretty cool and scary.

[LCHIEN]

They can definitely tell from your IP address. The map app on my iPod knows
where I am because someone has mapped my router's signal to my house on
Google maps. Pretty cool and scary.

The tehnology to map your ipod is Skyhook. That can map your wifi server location to maybe a radius of 30 feet to a point on the earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless
works well in populated areas but not rural because of the mapping effort (Drive by wireless snooping cars with radio direction-finding).

But that's only for mapping wireless devices.
It does not work for wired networks. However your IP address does indicate where you are to a country. Because IP addresses are handed out by your ISP, and IP addresses are blocked off by country, they can easily tell what country you originated your session in.

Apparently there are computer servers known as proxy servers. You rout your IP requests thru the proxy server, which will take incoming IP requests and strip off the originating computer's IP address, forward the IP request and capture any reply. Thus to the remote servers it looks like the request originates from the proxy server, not you. Then, the proxy server repackages the internet packet and sends it to the original requestor which to your computer now looks like it resulted from your original transmission. So if you use a UK-located proxy server, then it appears to the target server that the request originates in the UK since it can tell from the proxy server's IP address that it is in a UK block of IP addresses.

If you google free UK proxy servers, you get a rather mixed bag of results.

Anyway, I think that's the theory, I was wondering if anyone had actually done it, are free proxy servers safe??? and will it really work.
And if it does work, will amazon.co.uk accept US credit cards? I know credit cards can be accepted worldwide but that some organizations refuse foreign credit and debit cards for various reasons. I know that my cousin could not get US Macy's on-line to accept a Canadian-issued Visa card o deliver goods to a US address. And one lonely Sunday night in rural France we could not get a french gas pump to accept any of the 6 or 8 US and Norwegian credit cards we had among us (yes they did work at all restaurants and hotels). We had to bribe a wary passing frenchman to charge his card for gas...

Apparently this (internet IP spoofing) is an issue for some wanting to watch US TV programs in Europe or for american wanting to watch certain UK football broadcasts in the states; apparently they are trying to enforce broadcast area restriction on their broadcast license agreement.

[sparkeyjames]

You still face the problem of payment for the MP3 file. Credit card transactions
can be traced to country of origin of the issued credit card number.
They may still reject the transaction at that point. But you
never know till you try. Use the proxy server route and see what happens.
If that does not work you can probably find it on a file sharing network, not
legal or fair to the producer of the song but you probably will find it.

[LCHIEN]

I'm pretty sure they will reject my credit card if the spoof is successful. Also using a proxy I got as far as entering my credentials and when i tried to create a new account it said i already had one and accepted my US-Amazon password before it proceeded to lock up on me. So apparently they share user databases. I could create some new credentials (username, pasword, fake UK street address) but i think i will hit the credit card snag.

yeah they made me waste a lot more than $0.99 worth of time for this stupid song my wife wants. OK, I want it too.

However I'm thinking my colleague at the Abderdeen Scotland UK office....

[woodturner]

I
it's a UK release, not sold in the US.

There may well be IP and copyright issues, so that it is not legal to own in the US. If so, there could be legal consequences if discovered - in some cases, far out of proportion to the apparent severity of the "crime". Sort of like owning a hedgehog in Pennsylvania....

Might be worth checking, just to be safe.

[Rand]

What song is it? I'll try to find it for you.

[LinuxRandal]

Proxy servers can or can not be safe. Your better bet would be to find someone over there (Ray in the UK maybe), or someone that has used the one chosen. Otherwise while I could set up a proxy server, I could also copy/clone/mine information from it.

Have you found the song on You Tube? If so, you could pull it out of your browsers temp/cache file, copy and rename, then run it through a program, to just get the audio.

There may be issues with spoofing that would be similar to file sharing.
I asked Hank something similar a while back. He has Itunes, and I was trying to find out if they had Canada's Worst Drivers, available on the US site. I watched one season on You Tube (it had already aired up there), but it wasn't available, and at the time no American version. (still would have been good training for common issues for my new driver at the time, nephew)