Has anyone ever heard of using Virtual Private Networks to access blocked sites?

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I'm thinking of hooking up with a VPN so that I can access U.S. video streaming sites from Canada. I have heard that Hotspot Shield is a good free service. I'm quite the newbie at this. Is this easy to set up? Is it legal and safe to use sites like Hulu.com? Does anyone have some advice or a How To site that can help me get started on setting up the VPN? Any concerns I should have? In particular I would like to watch streaming video from the U.S. networks. T.V. shows, movies, etc. They won't allow Canadians to access their videos. How do other Canadians get around the blocks from the networks? I do know of downloading from torrents, but that is illegal.O:)
Thanks.
 
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I believe access to Hulu from Hotspot Shield has been blocked. If you have your own US-based virtual server (you can find them from around $5 a month) then you can install a VPN server and access Hulu, et al. PopTop is a good candidate to use as a VPN server for this purpose as there's a lot of guides for setting it up and no special client software is needed on Windows or OS X to connect to it.
 
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On legality, I suspect that using a proxy or VPN to get at content which is restricted in that way is probably illegal, although I expect the onus is on Hulu to secure their content from such access rather than expecting people to be good boys and girls and not try.
 
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I have a VPN link to my work site and the IT department has given me a username and password. Just loading the VPN software on my computer does not get me thru the firewall.
 

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