MIT OpenCourseWare’s videos on YouTube, which had been blocked around the world since last Thursday evening, are once again viewable.

Just before midnight (EDT) on Thursday June 14, over 5,000 OCW videos on YouTube — including classroom lectures, MIT faculty interviews, and student project presentations — were suddenly blocked to viewers all around the world. Visitors to the OCW channel on the YouTube website, or on the YouTube app, saw an error message: “This video contains content from MIT. It is not available in your country.”

While this error message implied that the blockage was somehow dependent on the viewer’s country, we believe the blockage was worldwide.

Visitors to the OCW website, where these videos are embedded within course webpages, got a similar error message that videos could not be played.

OCW immediately requested help from YouTube Support to fix the issue.

On Monday June 18, the YouTube team informed OCW that the videos would be restored upon approving a new “Subscription Offerings Amendment” to our YouTube Partner Agreement. After discussions between MIT and YouTube legal teams, an approved agreement is now in place.

We are glad that YouTube has restored access to OCW’s videos. YouTube has long been a valued partner to OCW in freely sharing our open course materials around the world. We look forward to working with YouTube to ensure that our content remains available to all, without barriers.

NOTE: This post was updated on June 25, 2018, to reflect the approved agreement between MIT and YouTube.