Like never before, inauguration experienced online

I am U.S. expat in China. Couldn't watch live coverage. Internet skill decent but not great, and unaware of new media outlets online, so I don't know where to go for good recoverage of this event. Where can I watch this online that will still have good quality even in china (i.e. not slow, etc.)

Please advise

The problem, bredmond, in your case, is that there was a mention of communism in his speech, and it wasn't flattering, so the Chinese gov't blocked it out. And now, since I've used the "C" word in my response, you probably won't see IT either!
The rest of us should be grateful for living in free countries!

DGBEACH - English websites in China aren't censored nearly as much as is generally believed. For example, most news sites such as CNN are available without issue (the one big exception was BBC News -- Which was singled out by China and blocked for years, presumably due to a massive falling out. It was unblocked during the Olympics, but I don't know if it's back). Youtube has always been available too, with the exception of a brief period (about a week long?) a couple years ago when it was unavailable. Wikipedia (English) was previously blocked, but is once again available. As for sites such as this one, or any science or technology site, even with forums.. it would be exceptional and unusual to see such a site blocked.
It is the Chinese sites that are blocked more carefully. People in China are often quite naive in their usage of sensitive sites, and do not expect punishment.. but of course the people considered most actively subversive are very likely given attention and prosecuted.

I don't intend this to be seen as support for China's censorship policies -- I just want to better inform people of the reality.

That said.. Now that the inauguration is over, it should be easy to obtain the video from many sites with a little patience and a bare minimum of computer literacy. Youtube should suffice (just wait for it all to buffer).. or any number of other video sites. Someone's probably put it up on bittorrent sites too.

The story, as I heard it, was that his speech was being broadcast live in China, right up until he made so called unwelcome remarks about communism, at which point it was "unfortunately cut off". Can you really be certain that what YOU will be seeing online will be uncensored? Would you know the difference?

I read that news too. I'm familiar with the way in which the GFW (great firewall) blocks traffic. There are some sites which are blocked/blacklisted entirely (apparently at the IP address level, as well as perhaps at DNS). These typically remain blocked for long periods of time.

In other cases, if you visit pages containing many sensitive words, it seems as if your own internet connection can cut out for a short while (1 or 2 minutes).. I don't recall if it's all traffic, or if it just stops responding to DNS queries. This happens rarely, but it seems like it's a pattern (real or imagined). I suspect this is done at the internet provider level with some software, but I can't be sure.

Anyway.. If you manage to access a foreign site at all, they don't have the technology or manpower to filter the videos. Of course it is possible in theory, but it has not been observed to happen. If a pattern of this happening emerges, that would be news (and there are sites that discuss such things). Of course if you go to an official Chinese news channel, you can expect bias and propaganda. Everyone knows this to an extent.. though of course they forget/ignore this when their spirits are running high (similar to what happens in any nation when people feel under attack from a foreign power).

Basically what I mean is.. in treatment of foreign sources, they typically use a big banhammer rather than exercising fine control and/or replacing portions of content. I don't think they have the will to filter English sources any more than they currently do, since that would just upset foreigners more (who are typically a lot more touchy about these things than the locals).

I realized the youtube thing. I jusst wanted to see the whole motorcade procession thing, the oath, the speach and whatever else i might have not known about. I thought i could use a proxy, but i havent had any luck when i tried to use it with sites like hulu so i could see SNL and others. Even with scripts allowed, it just wont work. I will watch the youtube one and post back if i remember to regarding mention of Communism. By the way, youtube was down for a couple of months (2 maybe?) between 2007 and 2008, like november, december, januaryish.

The next part of this post may contain sensitive information regarding censorship and adult content. My intention is to keep it within the context we are discussing....For those who also curious, they saber-rattled against Google for allowing 'adult' content to be viewed in their country. Google has since agreed to elevate their efforts to prevent this. It is interesting too because the DVD shop clerks are not afraid to show it to you to buy it. I remember this old lady dropped it in the stack of DVD's i was looking at and for more information to narrow my search. She wasnt afraid to talk. BTW, i didnt pursue her offer if it matters to anybody. also out of curiousity i did a internet search last year to test the Great Fire Wall on sensitive adult words (not politically sensitive words, im not that bold) and switched to image search. It might show like two or three thumbnails on the image search part of google, then the rest would all be just empty squares. if you clicked on one of them, they would get the whole "connection was reset screen" then no page will load at all, except for pages already viewed which can be viewed by going back page. so you have to restart your browser completely. I tried it recently and it is the same.

Anyway, besides the adult content issue: I think censorship is changing a little though. Recently here, 6 off duty police officers beat a local kid to death and it was all over the news for a while. Then some of them got life in prison. That actually surprised cause i was visiting a college buddy in another province who speaks english well. I was watching a show with his dad and it had all these prisoners coming out under guard and talking to a reporter. It was all in chinese, and i was just staring at it while talking to his dad, so i said, what is this? and just like i thought, he said they are about to be executed. I said "and they are showing this interview?" he said, "yeah, it is on all the time" and i know in america this show would at the very least have a buzz, probably more. Also, BBC used to be blocked, but now it is not, same with wikipedia...all just like ontheinternets said. Censorship is not the only 'variation in standard' though. The regular vendors would be so vulnerable to a lawyer in amerca. A lawyer with any level of motivation would be able to walk into there and shut them down with a big payment coming their way. Intellectual property rights, building code violations. That is of course, an enormous simplification, and it assumes that the locals were on american standards. But here is an example, i wanted to buy adobe photoshop here, but i couldnt find a legit copy. It is all pirated, and everybody said "why would you want to buy a legit copy? its too expensive!" everybody said that, including college administrators and professors that i pal around with. I looked for several days, but nobody in town had real copies of ANY software. Fortunately Santa brought it for Christmas this year. and by Santa, i mean my Dad, and by brought i mean sent it via fed ex.

Ok so I will watch the Obama speech on youtube. Good old youtube.