Ogrish.com

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The new 2006 logo of Ogrish, reflecting a change.

Ogrish.com was a website which presented uncensored news coverage and multimedia material based for the most part on war, accidents, executions, and crimes. Much of the material depicted is generally considered offensive (uncensored real gory videos and images). The content was depicted as a means to challenge the viewer, with its catch line being 'Can you handle life', but later changed to 'Uncover Reality' after the site received a major design overhaul with aims of becoming more open to the general public and become a respected 'alternative news service'. The domain now redirects to liveleak.com, a site registered in October 2006, billed as the successor of ogrish.com and featuring mostly user submitted videos and allowing the embedding of media on other sites.

1 History of Ogrish.com
2 Liveleak
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History of Ogrish.com

The site hosted many graphic videos of violent events (most notably terrorist attacks), with the permission of the families of the people shown.^[1] This has led to heated arguments concerning the rights of the people pictured and the nature of the pictures and videos on the site. For example, in 2002, graphic pictures and videos of the unfortunate jumpers of the September 11, 2001 attacks were displayed on the site. A number of hacking attacks from Koreans occurred after Ogrish uploaded the execution video of Kim Sun-il during the summer of 2004.^[2] In September of 2005, graphic pictures of Hurricane Katrina victims were posted on the site without the families' consent.

Since 2002 or 2003, the site, hosted in the U.S., was headed by the Dutchman Dan Klinker. The company sometimes paid for original submissions of video, but also automatically monitored Arabic websites for material posted by terrorists.

In August 2005, German official internet watchdog group Jugendschutz.net contacted the local branch of telecommunications company Level 3 about Ogrish, whose IP address was then blocked in Germany. Since several ISPs connect through the blocked Level 3 connection in Frankfurt, Germany other countries outside of Germany are also affected by this block, including: Netherlands, France, Poland, Italy and Switzerland. The Youth Protection group had found that the provider violated German legislation that requires websites to verify the age of its visitors before granting access to adult content.^[3] When disturbing pictures and footage of the Madrid train bombings appeared on Ogrish, the site was blocked by Spain and ordered to be taken offline. These orders were however not pursued.

In addition to regularly updated front-page submissions, such as videos, Ogrish.com also offered a forum, blog, and wiki. Ogrish previously offered a subscription service to its archive; however, this service was discontinued sometime in late June to early July for unknown reasons. In February 2005, Ogrish began publishing OgrishMag, a magazine featuring gore images and articles about violent death and contents similar to those from the site. Such images' origins are questionable, as in order for a gory image to be taken, there must first be a gory event. The website often hosts content that would be considered cruel by most people.

In early 2006, for the first time since it started, Ogrish.com changed its design to a much faster-loading, cleaner layout. Its previous layout was very "dark" and graphic-intensive. On January 27, 2006 the "Flame/Lame/Hate" section was replaced with The Ogrish Zoo, a more politically correct version that forbade racial slurs. This change lasted barely a day, and after some consideration was finally replaced with "The Underground", a private and hidden member group accessible only at the request of an established member to an administrator. On April 21st Ogrish closed this section, finally making the transition from a "Gore" website to an "Uncensored News" website. In April 2006, Ogrish.com introduced a Podcast service (DJed by Shawn Wasson, who's also responsible for SickSiteRadio and BareKnucklePolitics.com) and added a new forum section called Underground Media--members have the choice to join this section to see more images and videos. The forums are still online and now accessible via www.ogrishforum.com

Ogrish.com typically received between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors per day, however during times of “bad news,” the number of visitors could reach up to 750,000 per day.

The website's name derives from the archaic word "ogrish" according to the site's FAQ, "ogrish" or "ogreish" is defined in older dictionaries as a giant or monster in legends and fairy tales that eats humans and or a person who is felt to be particularly cruel, brutish or hideous.

The website has now been closed or incorporated into liveleak.com. Going to ogrish.com redirects to liveleak, and used to give the message "Dear Ogrish Viewer, Welcome to LiveLeak.com. Ogrish.com has been incorporated into Liveleak to ensure you get all the uncensored media you are used to along with so much more. Feel free to sign up, comment, and upload media. If you are a member of the Ogrish.com forum you can sign into LiveLeak using your forum username and password or make an entirely new account. Thanks."

However the Ogrish Forum, which captures the essence of Ogrish-that of sharing uncensored news/gory clips and discussion on associated topics-remains online at http://www.ogrishforum.com/.

[edit] Liveleak

Liveleak, based in London, lets users post and share videos, similar to sites like YouTube, but it allows some sexual content and emphasizes reality-based footage such as war scenes from Iraq or grisly accidents. ^[4]

The site does not make it easy to download videos for local viewing or editing, but a third-party Greasemonkey user script is available for the purpose.^[5]