Beyond National Borders on the Internet

Upon happy arrival in Glasgow I had to discover that my favorite news satirist Stephen Colbert cannot be accessed from the UK — wow! Hadn’t expected that he would take making fun of old Great Britain to that level! (actually, of course, this has to do with licensing stuff). I had been tempted to try and use one of the infamous „youtube proxies“, but they never worked for me. Today, through a forum of Colbert fans, I discovered the service „Hotspot Shield“ that actually does.

I’d usually be skeptical of free services like that, but my trust is increased after seeing that the program is also featured by German software site „Chip“. And by that fact that I can see how they make money: by adding ads to videos you watch using them, which I suppose is the de-facto main use for the thing.

By getting rid of the stupid „this content is not available in your country“ notes in youtube and elsewhere, I think this is one important step back to the free web, and to leaving country borders behind you when you log on. At least as long as all content is available in the US…