Streaming video: How to bypass country restrictions

Steephill.TV provides an excellent list of links to live streaming video of the Tour de France. Unfortunately, most of them have country restrictions due to their licensing agreements with the Tour organizer. There is a way to bypass these restrictions. I haven't done this in a long time, but here's the theory. If you get this to work, please comment with your experience or link to your own how to.

1. Find proxy servers in the broadcasting country. For example, if you want to watch the French streaming video feed, find a web proxy server in France. Here's one list.

2. Choose a public proxy that will anonymize or hide your origin. Software that will automatically test this for you is Charon. Charon will also automatically search proxy lists for you and tell you which proxies are good, saving you a lot of time and effort. Within Charon, select "Check Proxies" and "Check anonymity of proxies." Then select "Connect Options" and "Use External Judges." Let Charon due its magic and wait for it to generate the report. Charon can sort proxies by country so pick one in France or whatever country to you want to browse in.

3. Change your web browser settings to use the proxy.

• In Firefox, select Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings. Click the "Manual Proxy Configuration" button and fill in the proxy IP address and port number (as reported by Charon).
  
• In Internet Explorer, Select Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections (tab) -> Lan Settings. Click the button for "Use a proxy server for your LAN." Enter the proxy server IP address and port.
  
• In Safari, select Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced. Click the "Change Settings" button next to the "Proxies" label. Click the "Web Proxy" button and enter the proxy server IP address and port.

Select your country-restricted video feed and let me know how it works! After you're finished, don't forget to reverse the steps above to disable proxy usage. You typically don't want to send any sensitive information like usernames and passwords through untrusted proxy servers.