VPN Articles and News

6 Easy Steps To Unlock YouTube in Your Country

By Paul Liu
Monday, November 11th, 2013

YouTube is a popular video sharing website owned by Google that has revolutionized the way people share and consume content online. The site features user-generated and copyrighted videos that anyone can watch, rate, flag as offensive, comment upon and share. Since its inception, YouTube has consistently ranked as one of the most visited websites on the internet and it now serves billions of video requests per day. The site is also available for Smartphones and tablets running on iOS/ Android, gaming consoles such as Wii, Xbox and Playstation as well as Smart TVs through apps and specialized services.

YouTube Censorship

Even though YouTube is the third most popular website on the internet, it is not available throughout the world. A lot of countries have banned specific videos or the entire YouTube website for political, religious, ideological, security, social and copyright reasons. For instance, YouTube is permanently banned in China, Morocco, Iran, Libya and Turkey since the last few years. In addition, the site was also blocked in Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sudan in the recent past. Apart from government and ISP censorship, YouTube is also blocked at many organizations, schools and universities to conserve bandwidth or to boost productivity.

Apart from institutional censorship, certain YouTube features are available only at specific locations. For instance, the YouTube rental service that allows people to rent movies from a library of over 6000 titles is available only within United States and United Kingdom. In addition, YouTube itself may decide to block content or videos in certain countries because of copyright issues or due to the presence of inappropriate content. As an example, a lot of music videos and songs published on YouTube are not available in Germany due to the dispute between YouTube and GEMA over sharing of royalties. When a user tries to watch a video that is not available in his/her country, he/she will come across the message – “This video is not available in your country”.

How Does YouTube Censorship Work And How To Get Rid Of It?

The censorship of YouTube is primarily done through IP addresses. ISPs and network administrators block the IP address of the YouTube website so that it becomes inaccessible from within their networks. YouTube also relies on the IP detection technology to serve/block content. For example, when a visitor with a non-US or non-UK IP address tries to access the movie rental service, YouTube denies the request because it knows the actual location of the user. Likewise, when visitors from Germany try to access music videos that are blocked in their country, their request is not fulfilled because they have a German IP address.

To unblock all the features of YouTube from any location, you must change your default IP address and switch to a US or UK IP address. While changing of IP address sounds complicated, it can be achieved within few seconds by using an IP changing solution like a proxy or a Virtual Private Network (VPN). However, using a proxy may not be the best solution to unblock YouTube since a lot proxy services (especially shared and public ones) deliver very slow speeds and some of them even leak real IP addresses. In contrast, VPNs deliver very high speeds plus they protect your true IP address and location with strong encryption so they are ideal for unblocking of YouTube (and other location restricted sites). Here are the 6 simple steps that you need to follow to unlock YouTube from any location with a VPN:

Step 1: Subscribe to a high speed and unrestricted bandwidth plan of a reputed VPN service provider. To unlock YouTube, we recommend subscribing to VPN plans from HideMyAss, StrongVPN, ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access or IPVanish. These companies not only deliver exceptional speeds but also provide IP addresses from several different countries (including US, UK and Canada).

Step 2: Setup the VPN service on the device of your choice (computer, Smartphone or tablet). A lot of VPN vendors provide their own custom VPN tools for Windows and Mac based computers but mobile devices need manual configuration. The manual setup process is simple enough and involves creation of a new network connection and typing in the parameters supplied by your VPN vendor.

Step 3: Save the VPN connection details and restart your system if necessary. For unlocking YouTube videos on a Smartphone or tablet, it is also necessary to close and restart the YouTube app so that it can use the VPN connection settings.

Step 4: Click on the VPN Connection name in the start menu (or the connection’s desktop icon) to start the service. In case you have a slow internet connection or if you are trying to connect to a server that is located far away from your location, you would need to wait for few seconds so that the service can locate and connect to the server.

Step 5: After the connection is made, choose an IP address as per your needs. For example, in order to access the movie rental feature of YouTube, you must choose an IP address from US or UK. Likewise, to access the local version of YouTube Canada, you must switch to a Canadian VPN server. It is easy to switch servers manually just by visiting the server list section of your provider’s website and choosing a VPN server from the list as your VPN server of choice. While changing your IP address, try to connect to the nearest server that will allow you to unblock blocked features so that you can watch the videos at best possible speeds.

Step 6: Open the YouTube homepage through browser or app and verify that you are able to watch videos and access blocked features. Also, remember to stop and restart the YouTube app after switching to the new IP address to bypass the GEO-IP restrictions through your mobile device. Congratulations, you have successfully unblocked every feature of YouTube from all the countries in the world.