Cómo acceder a Pandora Radio desde fuera de EEUU

Pandora es un servicio para escuchar música en Internet. De acuerdo con su propia descripción, más o menos:

Pandora Radio es el servicio de radio por internet personalizado que te ayuda a encontrar nueva música basándose en tus canciones favoritas. Crea estaciones de radio web personalizadas, escucha música gratis.

Pandora funciona muy bien, no necesita ninguna instalación, simplemente lo abres un una pestaña del navegador, seleccionas tu música favorita para crear tu propia "estación de radio", dejas la pestaña abierta y te olvidas. Cuando se acabe tu música seleccionada, Pandora buscará más música de acuerdo con tus preferencias. Tiene un pequeño inconveniente si no vives en EEUU. No puedes acceder porque capturan tu dirección IP y te prohíben el acceso.

Pero hay una fácil solución, hace unos días encontré esta pequeña joya en Internet: KProxy Agent. Te permite conectar a Internet desde otras direcciones IP. Bueno, si no te interesan mucho o no sabes mucho de estas cosas tecnológicas, lo único que tienes que saber es que podrás escuchar Pandora en cualquier parte.Y todo gratis.

Todo el mundo lo puede hacer, sigue los siguientes pasos :)

Paso 1. Descarga KProxy Agent

Ve a http://kproxy.com/agent.jsp y descarga la versión "Windows portable". Es la versión más sencilla para gente sin conocimientos de informática. Si sabes y puedes pegarte con la configuración de proxys del navegador, prueba la versión multiplataforma (cross-platform) porque la descarga es bastante menos pesada.

Paso 2. Descomprime KProxy Agent

Te habrás descargado un zip. Descomprímelo en tu ordenador. Una vez descomprimido está listo para ser usado. No requeiere ninguna instalación. Todo debería funcionar así en Windows :D

Paso 3. Lanza KProxy Agent

En el directorio de instalación de KProxy Agent encontrarás el fichero "Surf". Ejecútalo y te abrirá KProxy Agent junto con un navegador Google Chrome  conectado a KProxy Agent listo para navegar.

Paso 4. Selecciona un servidor de EEUU

KProxy Agent tiene varios servidores disponibles, selecciona uno de EEUU, así para el mundo será como si te conectaras desde EEUU.

Step 4. Ve a Pandora

Teclea en el navegador recientemente abierto "pandora.com" como cualquier otro navegador y... ta-chán! Pandora funciona perfectamente.

He estado escuchando música horas y fue muy agradable. Creo que lo voy a usar a diario :)

Ahora estoy probando ésto con otras plataformas en las que tengo mucho interés como Google Music y... Netflix. ¡Publicaré pronto mis resultados!

How to enjoy Pandora Radio from outside US

Pandora is an awesome site to listen music. According to its own description:

Pandora radio is the personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create custom web radio stations, listen free.

Pandora works great, it doesn't need any installation, just open it in a tab in your browser, select your favorite music to create you own "radio station" and play it in background. When your selected music will run out, Pandora will look for more music according to your preferences. But it has a little issue if you are outside US. You can't access this site. They track your IP address and forbid the access.

But there is an easy solution, I recently found this little jewel in Internet: KProxy Agent. It allows you to connect to Internet from other IP addresses. Well, if you don't understand very much about this tech things the only thing you need to know is that you will be able to listen pandora anywhere. And it is free.

Everybody can do it, just follow the next steps :)

Step 1. Download KProxy Agent

Go to http://kproxy.com/agent.jsp and download the Windows portable version. It is the easiest version for people with no computer skills. If you think you can deal with proxy servers try to download the cross-platform version.

Step 2. Unzip KProxy Agent

You have downloaded a zip, just unzip it in your computer. Once it is unzipped it is ready to use. No installation is required. Everything should work like this in Windows :D

Step 3. Launch KProxy Agent

In the KProxy Agent folder you will find a file "Surf". Execute it and it will open a Google Chrome browser ready to navigate.

Step 4. Be sure that you have selected an US server!

KProxy Agent has several servers available, just pick an US server, so the world will know that you connect to internet in US!

Step 4. Go to Pandora

Just type in the browser "pandora.com" like any other browser and... ta-da! Pandora works fine.

I was listening for hours music and was great. I think I'll use this everyday :)

Now I'm trying this with other platforms that I have a lot of interest, like Google Music and... Netflix. I'll publish my results soon!

What "Doors in the Field" means

Lately, there are lots of news about Internet censorship that is comming to the free nations too. Goverments want to control all Internet traffic, cut down p2p, turn off direct download sites (aka Megaupload), even some companies can't offer their services in other countries (pandora, netflix, google music, etc) due to the laws approved by those goverments that are helping to die (but they don't know it) to the copyright lobby.

It seems that goverments are doing things for the common good... of several thousands of people in the world, against billions. I recently read about this point of view, and it is very interesting. What are doing those billions people? They should win, they outnumber by far that poor blind people. Well, there is a silent war in the background.

Putting doors in the field (literal traslation of "poner puertas al campo") is a Spanish axiom, meaning that when something is so big (like the countryside), you can't put a fence around it to stop people getting in. It is used when someone do a pointless futile action trying to accoplish an impossible mission. That expression fits very well when we are speaking about Internet restrictions and inspired the name and the theme of this blog.

People is fighting a resistance war against restriction, bypassing doors in the field with easy. The powerful people is creating more and more sophisticathed methods to build doors, but billions of brains thinking on how to bypass them are winning the war.

The first example of this story is the Napster case. When Napster where closed, music lobby was very happy because they have killed piracy but they where wrong. Internet evolved and adapted its methods and built decentraliced p2p systems to share not only music, but any type of file.

Every try to restrict Internet became in a solution to bypass that restrictions (anonymous proxies, VPN, TOR). Each restriction creates more powerful solutions. It's like fighting against bacterias with antibiotics, sooner or later, bacterias will adapt and antibiotics will be useless.

And this blog will try to talk about restrictions and how to bypass them. I'll post in English and Spanish, at least, some posts will be written right (or not...) Use this knowledge as is, you are solely responsible for your actions. 

Freedom is out there.