Accessing The Daily Show streams from outside the US

EDIT 05.05.2014: The problem is back, there is no longer an easy trick to circumvent the blocking of foreign IP’s. You now have to use a VPN or proxy software to route your traffic through a US-IP. I currently use https://hola.org/ as a browser plug-in. It’s a p2p VPN browser plug-in that can be activated for specific tabs, which makes it more safe, because you don’t accidentally route your web-mail or other private content through the VPN.

EDIT: THIS POST IS OUTDATED THE PROBLEM DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE, YOU CAN NOW (15.02.11) ACCESS THE DAILY SHOW ON-LINE-STREAMING FROM OUTSIDE THE US AGAIN.

Problem:

The Daily show on-line streaming recently switched to using the MTV Online player, because MTV Networks owns Comedy Central. The Problem with that is that you now can no longer access The Daily Show or other Comedy Central Shows outside the US because the MTV Online Player checks your IP.

Normally you would need to configure a proxy server inside the US to still access the content. But it is not easy to find a good proxy server and it is complicated to configure it, especially if you are already behind a proxy, for example inside your company network or university dorm. Also to be safe you would need to reconfigure your connection every time you do something else on the Internet, because you definitely don’t want the proxy to read all your Internet traffic while accessing your emails or similar.

Solution:
Originally Posted by saiftk on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/8zjv7/instructions_on_how_to_watch_thedailyshowcom/

1. use firefox
2. goto https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/modify-headers/
3. Use the Addon to add the X-Forward-For Header to all your HTTP requests (if you don’t know what a HTTP-Header is read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol)

• 3.1 click on tools (in german: extras)
• 3.2 click on “Modify Headers”
• 3.3 on the left side click on the drop-down menu (downward arrow)
• 3.4 in the first field type “X-Forward-For”
• 3.5 in the second field type “11.1.1.1” (or any other US IP)
• 3.6 leave the third field blank and press “Add”
• 3.7 enable the new rule and exit modify headers

4. Browse The Daily Show or MTV Site and they will think you are from the US now.

Why does this work?

The X-Forward-For Header can be added to your request by a Proxy server to tell websites your original IP even though you browse via Proxy. Most Proxy Servers support this function. With the above mentioned method you act as if you are accessing the Website via a Proxy Server that supports X-Forward-For and that your real IP is 11.1.1.1 and from the US. The programmers of the MTV-On-line Player probably thought that when the include the function to check for the X-Forward-For Header they can find people that are actually not from the US and try to access videos via a Proxy an can block them nevertheless. This would have worked if they would have done it like that:

[Connection with foreign IP?] yes -> [Block]
|
no
[X-Forward-For Header set?] no -> [Allow]
|
yes
[Foreing IP in X-Forward-For client field?] yes -> [block]
|
no
[Allow]

Instead they probably did it like that (this is Speculation):

[Connection Has X-Forward-For?]- no-> [is foreign?]- yes-> [block]
|                                                                                |
yes                                                                         no
[X-forward-For is foreign?]————no—->[Allow]
|
yes
[block]

Further Reading:
finding US-IPs: www.countryipblocks.net
what is a Proxy Server?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server
how does HTTP work?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http