Colbert explains how to deal with Internet censorship protests

Stephen Colbert provides some perspective on the net-wide blackouts yesterday, as well as some alternatives in case the Internet needs to stand up for itself again. Now I've got to find that video of Vader eating cheesy bread...

• [Mike Norman]

  In fairness, it is a disturbing lack of cheese.

• [David McKee]

  Oh the irony…  a blacked out article about blackouts…

  http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/515/censorship.png/

  • [freemoore]

    Yeah, that’s how it reads from Edinburgh, too.  I wish Colbert wasn’t banned here, it’s always his stuff we don’t get to see.

  • [Brett Patterson]

    How about your site detects my location and changes the headline to be correct: “Colbert doesn’t explain how to deal with Internet censorship protests”.

  • [Michael Rosefield]

    As a UKer, I’ve found a way around this that’s only slightly bothersome.

    * Sign up to Raptor VPN (it’s free),  
    * Connect to it and reload the page,
    * Once the video starts playing, turn off the VPN if it’s being too slow (the location check only happens at the beginning).

    If there’s a better way, I’m not aware of it yet….

• [snowmentality]

  Well, they’ve got BoingBoing’s number…

• [Vanessa Kelly]

  Ugh, I wish Colbert and Daily Show clips actually worked in Canada. The Comedy Network website is shit… and they wonder why people download the show on torrents.

  • [robdobbs]

    And the links never follow through. It should just take you to this video on whatever server is in the right place to stream to me. Fuckers. 

  • [tkdgns]

    They work here in South Korea, unlike Hulu, Netflix, nbc.com, etc.

  • [Brad Zimmerman]

    Like tkdgns (in South Korea apparently), I have no issues watching Comedy Central stuff from here in Poland. 

• [millie fink]

  Woo Hoo BoingBoing! You can’t even buy publicity like that!

• [satn]

  Psht, big deal, I read BoingBoing before you sold out!

  where’s my hipster glasses and cigarette?

  • [Incipient Madness]

     You mean you read BoingBoing back when it was a zine?

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      That’s the first line of the troll’s lament. After establishing their longtime-reader credentials, they usually make some complaint about Zeni, Marc and Corey.

      • [devophill]

        Nobody ever remembers poor Pescow.

      • [Robert Baruch]

        That just doesn’t hold a candle to NPR’s naming of Mark as “Frankenfelder” a few weeks ago!

  • [MB44]

    What did they sell out to? I’m curious because I have only checked the site for about 4 years and did not recognize the moment when they sold out to anything.

    • [SedanChair]

      the hornrim lobby

    • [penguinchris]

       I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t bother saying this, but @satn:disqus was clearly joking – he made it explicit by referring to hipster stuff (hipsters stereotypically liking things “before they were cool”).

      But even so, clearly what they sold out to was Big Banana.

• [robdobbs]

  Could we all just promise not to post Colbert videos from the official source since they’re always blocked outside of the America?

  • [jackie31337]

    I was quite surprised to see that I was able to watch it from Finland.

  • [matt headley]

    I can watch them in New Zealand

• [freemoore]

  Actually, while we’re on the de facto region-coding of stuff, is there any way to redirect y’alls’ wonderful book recommendations’ Amazon links to the UK Amazon site when clicked on from the UK?  I’m guessing nothing straightforward but hoping for a greasemonkey ninja to drop from the proverbial ceiling to answer my call…

  • [travtastic]

    It’s definitely nothing fancy, but their database pointers are shared. So you can just change the ‘.uk‘ to ‘m‘.

    Example!
    amazon.com/dp/0007288425
    amazon.co.uk/dp/0007288425

• [Pip_R_Lagenta]

  Colbert’s characterization of Boing Boing is, to me, reminiscent of Geraldo Rivera’s characterization of the Comedy Central network as “clips of old people falling down”.  The key difference being, of course, that Geraldo Rivera was not trying to be funny.

  • [Pip_R_Lagenta]

    My pedantic tendencies require me to correct my own poor recollection with facts.  In early August 2006, on the Fox News show “The O’Reilly Factor”, Geraldo Rivera asserted that Comedy Central hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “make a living putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice and people laughing”.  The correct quote is so much more incisive.

• [Erik Perera]

  Hey Comedy Central fans of non US location, Firefox + x-modify-headers plugin… ;-)

• [Culturedropout]

  And for iPad users, here’s something for you, too…. *ZING*!

  • [snowmentality]

    As an iPad user, I lol’d.

• [nem0fazer]

  To all blocked users – (I’m one of you in Canada), may I humble suggest tunnelbear? Its a great VPN app easily useable by IT semi-literates like me and you get 500mb per month free which is plenty for the occasional comedy central clip.

  http://www.tunnelbear.com/install/

  • [Mantissa128]

    I have just installed TunnelBear and it works flawlessly. Nice wood-grain retro finish too. Thanks!

    • [nem0fazer]

      I love it. FYI If you twitter a phrase they specify (something about loving tunnelbear I seem to remember) they give you another 1Gb for the month though it doesn’t roll over if you don’t use it. I have a twitter account I only use for that!

      I’ve just noticed I’m incredibly tight.

      • [silkox]

        Drink plenty of water to minimize hangover tomorrow.

        • [nem0fazer]

          Well OK but I’m not paying for any fancy carbonated stuff.

• [MadRat]

  I demand to know why Mark Frauenfelder hasn’t shown us a Darth Vader, cheesy bread clip sooner!!

• [Grey Devil]

  Sxephil also mentioned BoingBoing on his vlog over sites that went dark.

• [john clayton]

  It seems that the censorship video has been censored,not available in your location, That sounds like    ”you dont need to know, move along now little prole.”

  • [hostile_17]

    It truly is ironic.