Help me trick a chinese website into thinking I live there instead Missouri

October 22, 2009 6:01 AM

How can I get this website to think that I'm living in China ?

I was poking around on http://www.youku.com/ this morning after I saw a link on the blue and I noticed that they had Seinfeld and Big Bang Theory among other shows I enjoy and they were ready to watch in a youtube style. I attempted to watch them and I couldn't because of a dastardly 'this clip is blocked in your region' placard, is there anyway to get past and let me watch my stories ?

Specifics: I'm using Firefox 3.5.3

posted by carefulmonkey to computers & internet (7 comments total)

1. Go here. Pick a proxy & port which routes through China.
2. Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Connection Settings.
3. Select "Manual Proxy Configuration." Enter the proxy address & port you chose.
4. Click "okay."

You may have to try several before finding one that works nicely.
posted by koeselitz at 6:10 AM on October 22 [3 favorites has favorites]

Keep in mind that you'll be routing all your traffic through China, which could cause a lag too annoying to stream video YMMV.
posted by nitsuj at 6:35 AM on October 22

If lag is a problem you can use download tools like Download Helper to save the stuff to your hard drive. I use it all the time with YouTube because I find .flv to play better with MPC than they do within FF where they tend to be jerky.
posted by Mitheral at 9:04 AM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sorry, I know snark and smartarse comments are discouraged, but I can't help but remark on how funny it is, as an internet user living in China, to see someone asking how they can proxy into the Chinese internet.

Which is to say: use Foxyproxy or something else that allows you to set up your browser to use your Chinese proxy only for youku.com and/or other Chinese video sites you feel lik using (tudou.com has also got a lot of content), because otherwise you will find yourself very annoyed at not being able to access Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, the Philadelphia Inquirer website, HTTPS Google Docs, and (for some reason) Andrew Sullivan's blog. Among many, many others.
posted by bokane at 12:19 PM on October 22 [1 favorite has favorites]

Just Torrent 'em and be done with it. Your justification/rationalization for doing so can be that they are broadcast shows anyway. They beam 'em out to whoever wants to tune in... :-p
posted by StarmanDXE at 12:42 PM on October 22

use download tools like Download Helper to save the stuff to your hard drive

wow!!
posted by humannaire at 10:28 AM on October 24

... and Download Helper doesn't really work very well at all compared to FlashGot, which is really the standard as far as these things go. As far as I can tell, Download Helper is just a piggy-back website-specific downloader, whereas FlashGot seems pretty capable of d/ling through almost any flash program.
posted by koeselitz at 11:46 AM on October 24