I think I just caught Google in the act of censoring material from Iraq.

[brainshrub]

ON EDIT: According to DUer "OPERATIONMINDCRIME" when a user updates a video to google they can choose which countries can view it. The owner of this video, the user themselves, chose for you not to see it. It has nothing to do with google.

Thanks for clearing this up so fast. Another reason to love DUers.

I just found this while browsing for news about Iraq. I don't know what this means, but it appears that Google is censoring material from Iraq?

Note I said "appears." Don't everyone go wearing tinfoil hats... there has got to be a logical non-evil explanation. I just can't think of one right now. (ON EDIT: I'm glad I was proven right.)



Try it yourself:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4258374615945369026

If the link above doesn't work, try it from my blog:

www.brainshrub.com/google-censor-iraq

[Scout1071]

1. WTF is right! nt

[Chimichurri]

2. WTF indeed!

Everyday gets a little bit more bizarre. k&r

[Pirate Smile]

3. Recommended so, hopefully, we can figure out the answer.

I got out and did a search for it, it found it and gave me the same message when I tried to play it.

Do we know who the video is from?

[brainshrub]

11. Yes. No need to go into OMFG mode yet.

I have only recetly started uning Google video. This is the first time I've seen this kind of message.

[kaygore]

4. All they need is for Google to go to the dark side

[Stephanie]

39. If Google did it to them why wouldn't Google do it to us?

They cut deals with China, etc., who's to say they haven't been asked to cut a deal here? For "homeland security" of course.

[RagingInMiami]

5. Can any of the non-U.S.-living DUers click on this to see what happens?

[The Straight Story]

6. Maybe we can find it using another google country search

like googgle.cn or something, will see what i can find.

[Nevilledog]

7. Unbelievable.

Wonder what Google would say if you emailed and asked why this video was blocked....hmmmmm.

[FreedomAngel82]

65. Well if you remember

during the 2004 election the Bush/Cheney re-election site at first had a message board that was open to everybody than a couple weeks (if that) later they decided it was for only US citizen's. :eyes: After that they took it down completley. So it seems like it's the same type of stuff. Anybody here in Canada who can try this out?

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Given how they play along with the Chinese govt, there's no basis for

trust.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x399928
thread title (2-13-06 GD): NYT: "So Long, Dalai Lama" - Google demonstrates NEW WORLD CENSORSHIP
Comment/excerpt: Internet censorship has generally been visible in China. As Lie Xiaobo, a leader dissident writer is quoted in this important NYT story, "It was one thing when you hit on links that did not work. You could see what was blocked. The new Google hides the hand of the censor."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x443232
thread title (2-16-06 GD): VIDEO- Lantos SLAMS Search providers-compares compliance to Nazi germany
Comment/excerpt: A liveoaktx/Can-o-Fun VIDEO CLIP of a congressional hearing. Young lawyers from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (and another) face old Lantos, who insists they answer the question of whether their companies have anything to be ashamed of in their actions in China and then also whether they have reached out to the families of the Chinese who have been affected. He reminds them that IBM “complied” with Hitler’s government.
There are links and excerpts of related articles on the Can-o-Fun page with the video link.

And now they have their new "service" which would make your computer even more vulnerable to spying:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2098053
thread title (2-9-06 LBN): Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation
Comment/excerpt: “San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. … The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers.”

[Ksec]

9. I have no idea.

Weird

[stop the bleeding]

10. We need DU'ers from outside of the US to try this n/t

[Pirate Smile]

12. Good idea. Will you post a thread asking outside the US DU'ers

to come to this thread so they can try?

[brainshrub]

19. Done.

Good idea.

[stop the bleeding]

28. I went to it and kicked it -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=457778&mesg_id=457778

[malaise]

66. It's working where I am

in Jamaica.

[punpirate]

13. What is odd about this is that the content does not seem to be...

... particularly unusual. Were you trying to view the one listed on the right of the screen, "Night Explosion?"

If so, that doesn't seem to be either very revealing or sensitive.

[phusion]

14. What the fuck?

Same thing happens here...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

15. Could be a rights issue.

The owner may not have agreed to North American Serial Rights.

[eyesroll]

16. Is it possible the originating site bars downloads/streaming from the US?

I know Webmasters can block whole domains or IP ranges from being able to access the stie at all...

[DELUSIONAL]

17. I'm overseas -- and just tried this link

I got this message:

"This video is currently not available. Please try again later."

I'll keep trying --

Apparently I can manually download google player and the video -- the download buttons are on the left of the screen.

I am also on a slow dial-up connection.

[rodeodance]

22. does not half as scary.

[Violet_Crumble]

25. But it worked for me and I'm in Australia

Maybe it was some sort of technical glitch and their little message was poorly worded...

Violet...

[rodeodance]

18. I have never gotten that message ever before. Odd indeed.

[Junkdrawer]

20. You can see a preview here: (mostly black screen with some audio)...

Go here and press the play button on the video...

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=night+explosion+iraq

[Kali]

21. not a techie

but could this have something to do with it?

Google Video may remove or refuse to host content or links that violate its policies, including... graphic violence or other acts resulting in serious injury or death violations of copyright. Please see our DMCA policy for more information
Policy & Copyright Issues


Back to Browse | Next 10 Matches

[Violet_Crumble]

23. It works for me...

n/t

[brainshrub]

29. Where are you?

[Violet_Crumble]

36. Australia (n/t)

[Capn Sunshine]

37. somewhere outside the western hemisphere and American Continent

but I've said too much.
:yoiks:

[Violet_Crumble]

53. Damn you Cap'n! You said too much!!

;)

[PDJane]

24. I'm in Canada.

I don't know what's happening there, but I can play it.....and can't figure out why they'd block it, because it is (relatively) innocuous.

[stop the bleeding]

31. Really what is it?? n/t

[PDJane]

60. It's just a video of someone

blowing up a weapons cache. Lots of fireworks, not much else.........

[CJCRANE]

26. I'm across the pond...and the video works for me..nt

[stop the bleeding]

32. so that is 2 people from outside of the US that can play it- what is it?

[Stephanie]

42. that's three - Canada, Australia, and our friend across the pond

[CJCRANE]

44. You're not missing out on much -

it's a night scene, very late twilight. There's a tree on the left and a telegraph pole on the right.
It's very dark, then there's a brief fireball (weapons cache according to the notes).

[Violet_Crumble]

55. No, they're missing out on a lot...

That bit where Bush is in his undies dancing to a Ricky Martin song is a real eye-opener!


Oops...

Wrong video ;)

Violet...

[LibertyorDeath]

27. Works fine for me in Canada

[salvorhardin]

30. They are censoring based on IP address

I was just able to access the video using a proxy in Russia.

Here's how to do it in Firefox:
Tools-->Options
General tab
Connection Settings button
Click 'Manual proxy configuration'
Use an HTTP proxy from here: http://www.checker.freeproxy.ru/checker/last_checked_proxies.php (195.175.37.19 worked for me).
Don't forget to enter in the correct port number (80 in my example)
Click OK, and then OK again
Use Paul's URL.

Don't forget to change your settings back to 'Direct connection to the internet' when you're done.


As another user pointed out, this can't really be called censoring because when someone uploads a video to Google they get to choose which countries it plays in.

[princehal]

35. So

What is it?

[salvorhardin]

38. The video?

It's exactly what it's described as.
"This is a weapons cache found in Iraq, we detonated it with a few satchels of C4."

Pretty boring.

[bananas]

46. time to install the proxy switcher firefox extension?

[salvorhardin]

49. Hah! Maybe.

I'm sort of old school about these things.

Sometimes I long for my old green screen text terminal.

[Rebelry]

50. Thanks for the directions (slightly different for Imacs)

It worked. I had to go under preferences "firefox-->preferences"

but it otherwise worked.

I can't understand why this would be censored. As others said, it's innocuous- probably something our troops exploded- what's the point of censoring it??

Makes no sense, but I"m sure some brilliant DUer will figure it out. (On EDIT: And they did while I was watching!)

Gotta say it was kinda fun to get past the roadblock though!

Reb

[salvorhardin]

52. Well, as post 33 in this thread says

It's not really censoring. The person uploading the video gets to decide what countries it can be viewed in.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

33. GOOGLE IS NOT CENSORING.

When a user updates a video to google they can choose which countries can view it. The owner of this video, the user themselves, chose for you not to see it. It has nothing to do with google :)

[Junkdrawer]

41. If you click on "More from this user", you get another blocked video...

"Big Boom"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2053731645001034711

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

51. For Some Reason The User Doesn't Want The US Seein His Videos.

I've used google video. After you upload there is an advanced options page where you can choose if you want to charge for the video, allow others to link it to their sites, what countries you DON'T want it to be played in, etc...

[Junkdrawer]

54. Looks like he's in the US/British military in Iraq.

Tag line is:
"Detonation of Improvised Explosive Device used against Coalition forces. We found this one before they could use it against us."

[brainshrub]

57. Thanks for clearing that up.

On one hand, I'm happy that my favorite search engine is not evil, on the other hand... I thought I had discovered something.

*sigh*

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

58. I Hear Ya. In Today's Day And Age Anyone Would Be Terrified Coming Across

that for the first time.

When I first read your thread, I thought "holy shit, this is nuts!". But then I got this gut feeling it couldn't be true (I like google too and just couldn't believe it).

So I signed up for google video, uploaded a quick avi I had on my hard drive, hit edit my video afterwards and then advanced options, and then lo and behold at the bottom it had a huge list that you can select all the countries you don't want to view the video. I had the hunch that if we couldn't view it, it just HAD to be because of the upload user not google themselves :)

All I can say is Thank Friggin God though. Could you imagine if my experiment had failed? I woulda gone to sleep terrified.

[brainshrub]

61. I'm a big fan of Google as well.

I'm happy that it was a misunderstanding.

I was thinking: "Noooooo! Not Google! Anybody but Google!!!"

Google isn't perfect, but they are the only large corporation that I trust farther than I can spit.

[buzzard]

34. Works fine here in Ontario.n/t

[CJCRANE]

40. Censored by the video poster not Google apparently -

DU thread: http://tinyurl.com/avs4m

[Stephanie]

43. did you try it from a different search engine?

[madeline_con]

45. A possible explanation is here....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x457825

[CJCRANE]

47. Am I gonna get into trouble now

for watching these videos?

[Ksec]

48. Just where are you right now? Dont move. Were on our way.

:)

[Junkdrawer]

56. And the voice behind the picture booms "You are the dead" n/t

[guruoo]

59. I'm getting this error message appearing inside the player

when I click on any of the vid links
to the right under 'related videos'...

'this video is currently not
available
try again later'

Example: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5999956257038190450

[jim3775]

62. This might be a DMCA issue, not censorship. But maybe not...

Under the digital millennium copyright act certain video decoders are illegal. It is against the law to install or use them in the US but not in any other country, currently google is blocking search results when people search for this software.


Then again, the DMCA applies to dvd-decoding and and p2p file sharing, but that video is in the flash format so my DMCA theory might be wrong.

It is just a video of a small explosion (i can view it here in canada), I don't know why it would be blocked to americans.

Something strange is going on here.

[tridim]

63. Try this URL..

Hacked a bit, but it works.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvp.video.google.com%2Fvideodownload%3Fversion%3D0%26secureurl%3DjQAAAMDSmb-1OPP1CLa9f1-bcs2gTReMsrZC5QdmyK80GtWR9VRhk7Mp2NiKqAoXX9fhyR1iHiY88tS9k0v9PD9npom_WFwtAqdUDg2JSCwSjthLuBlFb_2HTCFWt5s4-RH0uy89beHEs3Y9qmkyVSmzSZF8iEMFr7Po7W4bXV7yhdUeP2-H4OzLU9x2fTbCEbQVoA%26sigh%3DPXHXCcCWG7EUeUsws50MW3kDVPU%26begin%3D0%26len%3D70859%26docid%3D4258374615945369026&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer%3Fcontentid%3Ddbf67acb0c8d91de%26second%3D5%26itag%3Dw320%26urlcreated%3D1140235364%26sigh%3D0oRI1fQyPkOxbJV08Dz7JdzouEs&playerId=4258374615945369026

[FreedomAngel82]

64. How strange

I Emailed it to Alex Jones so maybe he'll jump on it.