How to watch Comedy Central videos from outside the U.S.

Thanks to the wonders of copyright and contractual restrictions, Comedy Central (home of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, among others) doesn’t allow online streaming of its videos in Canada and certain other countries outside the United States, instead redirecting anyone who attempts to access their ComedyCentral.com website to TheComedyNetwork.ca. This also has the endearing effect of preventing non-Americans from viewing embedded ComedyCentral.com videos (such as for the aforementioned shows) on other websites. Given that the number of webmasters and bloggers who actually bother to type up transcripts for each video approximates one in a million (*bows*), this understandably leads to a fair amount of frustration.

But there is a solution! The following workaround (reposted with a few edits from OhRyan.ca in case it ever goes down) should allow most non-U.S. viewers to see all Comedy Central videos, including those embedded around the Web. I’ve been using it myself for several years now, and it’s never failed me. The only hiccup is that it only works for Mozilla Firefox (which you should probably already be using, anyway). Behold:

1) Install the Modify Headers add-on for Firefox.

2) Go to Tools → Add-ons → Modify Headers [Options].

3) Under “Select action”, select “Add”.

4) In the first box (“Header name”), enter X-Forwarded-For.

5) In the second box (“Header value”), enter 12.13.14.15.

6) Click “Add” to save the filter, then click “Enable/Disable” to make sure the little circle is green (enabled).

The intended result:

7) Click “OK” to save the settings and close the window.

The add-on should remain activated when Firefox is closed and restarted. If not, just open the Modify Headers window again and enable the filter.

Voilà! You should now be able to enjoy all the Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and <whoever else of relevance is on Comedy Central> your little heart can handle. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Last updated: 09/02/12 4:40 AM ET