An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

April 18, 2008

Watch Restricted YouTube Videos

I've noticed that an increasing number of YouTube videos are restricted to a limited number of countries, probably because the company that uploaded them doesn't have global distribution rights or because it wants to use different marketing strategies in other countries. Even if YouTube says that "this video is not available in your country", you can actually see it using a very simple trick: replace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID with http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID (VIDEOID is the 11-characters video identifier).


Example of video blocked outside US (Madonna - 4 Minutes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ciR9qR1dU
To see it, paste this in the address bar: http://www.youtube.com/v/I9ciR9qR1dU

Update (one day later): YouTube fixed the player and you can no longer bypass the country restrictions using this trick. Youtubegir has a nice proxy for YouTube videos.

The same trick works if you don't want to log in when you get this message: "This video or group may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community. To view this video or group, please verify you are 18 or older by logging in or signing up."


http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID sends you to the player used by YouTube when you embed the video into a web page and this player doesn't perform country verifications and can't detect if you're logged in.

16 comments:

  1. I wonder if this trick will work in China. There internet restrictions are too sophisticated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, this should work for videos that are restricted by YouTube. If you can't access YouTube because it was blocked by an Internet provider or by a firewall, then you could use a proxy or Tor.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Didnt take them long to make that not work.
    Now that video says its not available.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Bugabundo:
    Not exactly. You can't link to the video, but you can still see it if you paste youtube.com/v/ID in the address bar.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That actually works when you copy the URL mentioned in the blog message, but who knows how long as some Google employees probably read this blog also. =)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Greasemonkey script anyone?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you... Germany loves you now. ;) :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. This trick sure worked for me here in Israel. The original link didn't work, while the /v link worked.
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I can watch the BBC shows, but my Canadian and UK friends cannot watch the US shows. It is very strange.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Whoops! Apparently, this no longer works.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Strange, I get "we're sorry, this movie is no longer available". I also tried it with other videos "not available in your country".

    - Conu

    ReplyDelete
  12. As mentioned in the previous comment, YouTube fixed the player and this trick doesn't work anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  13. really cool trick, it works awesomely.

    ReplyDelete
  14. i live in China.
    i can watch tibet news by this trick.
    thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I'm from Kuwait, when I try that step first the video shows up, but whenever I click on play i get this message "We're sorry, this video is no longer available"

    I guess I'll stick with torrents :(

    ReplyDelete