Comedy Network Work Around for Canadians

[3pt14159]

Most hacker Canadians have a rough time trying to get into the conversation when The Colbert Report or the Daily Show does something interesting (like interview Jim Cramer, or lambaste a politician) because the video of the show is uploaded to Comedy Central which is unavailable to Canadians. Once The Comedy Network/CTV (both Canadian only) feel like it uploading we are fine, but this has taken days at times.

Buying a server in the United States and redirecting the traffic just to watch 2 shows hardly seems worth it, and finding it on torrent sites is difficult (because it is so easy to get it for free on the internet anyway) and may get your broadband turned off/slowed.

I have, however, discovered an easy way to get in on the discussion (read: watch the video) without having to wait for incompetent Canadian providers:

Wait.

I don't know why it works, but if you see the screen on an American site that says "This content is available at Comedy Network for Canadians" just give it 10 to 90 minutes (I don't know the exact time because I always get impatient and go off to do something else) when you come back ~viola~ you can see an image on the screen that you can play.

Anyone know why this is?

[nimaj]

I have no idea, but Canadians can watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report at CTV's website.

http://shows.ctv.ca/video/

[nimaj → nimaj]

I should add that the clips are always uploaded the next morning. So it shouldn't take days for you to watch the clips.

[gojomo]

Maybe they're "blocking" in a superficial way, a little like how sensitive info is sometimes stricken from PDFs by simply drawing black boxes in front -- leaving the data underneath for anyone who thinks to select-and-copy.

For example: maybe they insert/overlay a obscuring element -- but some limitation of the format (like maybe a maximum duration for a non-repeating animation in Flash?) means it eventually expires.

In any case, if you're enjoying the benefits, you might not want to make a big deal of it... it should be easy to close the hole if it becomes an embarrassment to them.