Wow! So is it just me that is banned or the whole of Youtube?
For your ego? Just you Hassan, just you.
But in reality it's everyone - although I can check if Saudi Arabia has banned you if you like? Although you'll be chucked on the pornography filter along with FFI, WikiIslam & Answering-Islam if you are.
Is that an accurate way of seeing who or what is banned? (I don't know much about this stuff)
Yes, it's 100% accurate. In short, I'm basically controlling a computer in Iran. Since Iranian computers are not allowed to access many pages and they get that error page instead, the proxy I am using will return that error page to my (actual) computer instead of the website.
Long Version:Essentially what I'm doing is using a computer located in Iran. So normally we would use our computers to access the Internet it is like this:
Hassan >> Hassan's Computer >> Hassan's ISP >> Website
That is to request information. To get information sent to you it is reversed:
Website >> Hassan's ISP >> Hassan's Computer >> Hassan
When you use a proxy (in this case, one located in Iran), it looks like this:
Sani >> Sani's computer >> Sani's ISP >> PROXY COMPUTER >> Website
(and then of course back again).
With Iran & Saudi Arabia however, all Internet traffic (browsing on the internet) either going out (page requests) or coming back in, is passed through a set of computers (servers) that have the monitoring software on them like this:
Sani >> Sani's computer >> Sani's ISP >> Proxy Computer >> Servers with filter >> Website
So basically, instead of going through 2 computers before I can get the website (mine & the proxy) it goes through 3 computers (mine, proxy & filtering server). When you make the request (type in a URL to your address bar), it goes to the filtering server, which compares that URL to its blacklists. If the URL is not on the blacklists, your request is passed on to the website in question, you get the page and everyone's happy.
If, however, the URL you want is on the blacklist, then the filter server returns the error page instead of sending through your request (to the website server that you want).
Since I'm basically 'controlling' a computer located in Iran, the filter server 'sees' that 'a computer in Iran' wants the URL and of course, denies access. The computer in Iran gets the error page.
Then that proxy computer that got the error page returns the error page to me.
Topic: hello from iran