Popular video sharing sites like Vimeo and DailyMotion were blocked in India last month following court orders.

Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders

It happened because some movies were illegally uploaded to these sites, the content owners filed a copyright infringement complaint and the Indian court ordered the ISPs to block the sites. Major Indian ISPs, including Airtel and Reliance, complied.

At the time of writing this, Airtel has restored access to the DailyMotion.com website but the videos hosted on Vimeo.com are still inaccessible to most users in India.

The Vimeo website itself is available but the sub-domain serving Vimeo’s video player (player.vimeo.ccom) has been blocked and thus the videos won’t play on your computer or mobile phone.

Watch Vimeo Videos in India

There’s however an easy workaround that can help you watch Vimeo videos if the site is blocked.

Open  ctrlq.org/vimeo, paste a Vimeo URL (e.g.  http://vimeo.com/43379235)  into the text and hit Enter. If you are lucky, the video should auto-play.

The ISPs in India have blocked the default Vimeo Video Player that is served over http but the same player can also be accessed over https and that secure site may have been left open.

The player at  ctrlq.org/vimeo  simply renders the video using the https version of the Vimeo player.

Bookmarklet for Embedded Vimeo Videos

If a Vimeo video is embedded on a web page, you can use the follow bookmarklet to unblock them with a click. Simple drag this link to your bookmarks toolbar and, while you are on page that contains Vimeo video, just click the bookmarklet.

Show Vimeo

Alternatively, look at the HTML source of that page (press Ctrl + U in Google Chrome) and search for Vimeo’s IFRAME. Either paste that URL into the ctrlq.org/vimeo or replace ‘http’ with ‘https’ and open that modified URL in your browser.

Permanently Switch to HTTPS

There’s another way to bypass the ban. You can create an account at Vimeo.com, log in and Vimeo will then automatically serve all its videos using the HTTPS version of the video player. This will obviously not happen for external sites that have embedded the Vimeo video player.