Re: Canadian Consumers

I wish I were free to tell you.

27 (edited by joltdude 2008-08-18 09:35:56)

Re: Canadian Consumers

Sigh.. I still am guessing its one of three things, or a combination, Some mass media provider, some cellular provider, or the language police....

Sirius had to guarantee a percentage of canadan channels, and pay for them to rebroadcast....
Wouldnt be surprised if it had to do with CBC Canada or another major media provider saying why arent you allowing us as a default service so well pull out a patent for providing content over the internet.. and the whole DRM thing..... Right now canada has really screwed DRM laws...

Re: Canadian Consumers

Look, what about this, take off the OS and just put a bootstrap loader that lets you boot any OS of a USB stick. Then market it for Canada as a general purpose computing device or controller. The buyer can then download and install what ever they want on it, including the Chumby's OS.   Then how can it be questioned as being different from any other microcontroller that is sold to Canada from the U.S.?

Re: Canadian Consumers

Here's a blog talking about this issue.  See the paragraph near the end - it should be clear why simply delivering the device without firmware won't address the issue.  My understanding is that we've also been asked to block our website entirely from being viewable by Canadians.

There is another unrelated Canadian company that has threatened to sue us as well - they have aggressively gone after several other companies.

Re: Canadian Consumers

Hey, I successfully managed to purchase a chumby from the official store and have it shipped to family who was on vacation down in the States. And I am now a proud Canadian owner of a Chumby.

Couple things, one, the fact CHUM is upset over the name is EXTREMELY stupid. I'm sending an email to them real soon. I never remotely REMOTELY thought of CHUM when hearing about the Chumby. That is super lame that they are upset over this. I love a lot of CHUM stations (namely tsn) but this is stupid. I'm going to be sending an email to them shortly, and will encourage a few friends as well (others who WANT a Chumby) Just curious... anyone in particular I could get in contact with? I understand you probably can't give that out here, but if a mod or someone wants to PM or email me with info... I'd like to think that some of their customers (CTV's) speaking up could do something. At the very least, make them realize its not something I will soon forget tongue

Also, you say you've been asked to block your website. That is GARBAGE. Please do not allow this. Blocking content is bad enough for us, things like video and radio up here (pandora, hulu) isn't accessible because of canadian laws, I'd hate to see SITES start being hidden. Not only that, I wouldn't be able to edit chumby stuff without much more work. You would never stop sending to Canadian customers who have acquired a chumby through indirect means right? Like I won't turn on my chumby one day to find I can't download the control panel?

Side note : please don't tell them... but for some reason pandora on my CHUMBY works. Heh... I can't use pandora ANYWHERE else. Do they have chumby specific servers or something that don't block canada? Its awesome, love the service. Wish I could get it on other devices I own.

By the way, great product, love the chumby so far. Just a little bit of instability with the BETA control panel (but I love the new sleep timer)

Re: Canadian Consumers

Not being a Chumby user as yet, but living in Canada, I have the following question regarding potential blocking.
Can a Chumby be configured to access a third party anonimizer or Proxy Server to bypass any direct blocking?  If not, I suggest you add this to the next upgrade, ship the product without a name plate allowing people to name it whatever you want, which I believe is done anyway.  Use plain brown boxes without the name.
The three letter broadcaster is just trolling for easy money.  I am sick and tired of people wanting to live off the sweat of others through such inane logic.  It's a good thing you didn't call your product the "E", or most companies with an "e" in their name would be suing you.

Re: Canadian Consumers

kwaldron wrote:

Can a Chumby be configured to access a third party anonimizer or Proxy Server to bypass any direct blocking?

Sort of.  The chumby uses "curl" for many of its network operations, which supports a configuration setting that allows setting up proxy servers.  There's a thread about it somewhere - not sure if it's been used successfully.  We don't currently test that functionality.

Re: Canadian Consumers

The roadblocks for sale in Canada have been resolved - chumbys are now available for delivery to Canada.

Re: Canadian Consumers

Duane wrote:

The roadblocks for sale in Canada have been resolved - chumbys are now available for delivery to Canada.

I'm not from Canada and I am so psyched to hear this, once again open software triumphs! *standing ovation* thanks to everyone at Chumby Industries

Re: Canadian Consumers

Duane wrote:

The roadblocks for sale in Canada have been resolved - chumbys are now available for delivery to Canada.

Unfortunately, it's still not possible to order a Chumby on the store from Canada, do you have more information about this ?

Re: Canadian Consumers

The store is supposed to allow you to order from Canada.

Can you give some details about what's not working?

Re: Canadian Consumers

Duane wrote:

The store is supposed to allow you to order from Canada.

Can you give some details about what's not working?

When I proceed to checkout, after filling the billing and shipping address, when I click on "continue secure checkout", I am redirected to the shopping cart page.
But if I change the country for United States, I can successfully got to the next step (payment method).

Re: Canadian Consumers

Hmmm, OK, we'll look into that.  Something must still be handling Canada incorrectly.

Re: Canadian Consumers

We've found the cause of the problem, now working on a fix.

Re: Canadian Consumers

OK, the problem should be resolved.  Sorry about the inconvenience - please post if there are any more issues.

Re: Canadian Consumers

Duane wrote:

OK, the problem should be resolved.  Sorry about the inconvenience - please post if there are any more issues.

Thanks. I have successfully ordered my Chumby smile