Ogrish.com
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Ogrish.com was a shock site which presented uncensored news coverage and multimedia material based for the most part on war, accidents, executions, and crimes.
Much of the material depicted was graphic, uncensored, 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. This site however has proven to be more censored than Ogrish.
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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 hosted content that was considered offensive or objectionable by many people.
[edit] History of Ogrish.com
The site hosted many graphic videos of violent events, without 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 jumpers of the September 11, 2001 attacks were displayed on the site. The site was targeted for hacking attacks from Koreans after Ogrish uploaded the execution video of Kim Sun-il during the summer of 2004.[2] In September 2005, graphic pictures of Hurricane Katrina victims were posted on the site.
The domain name ogrish.com was registered on June 18, 2000 and was originally run by an operator using the handle "Evil Knevil". The company sometimes paid for original submissions of video, but also automatically monitored Arabic websites for material posted by militants.
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, many other countries outside of Germany were 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 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 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 21 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 Shawnwasson.com 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 although registration is currently closed www.ogrishforum.com
According to then owner Dan Klinker (Quoted from interviews at the time) 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", i.e. "like an ogre", as defined in older dictionaries in a figurative sense; that is being like a person who is felt to be particularly cruel, brutish or hideous.[citation needed]
The website was incorporated into Liveleak.com on October 31st 2006.
