Cats. Ponies and cats. Hide your data in such images and use algorithms to extract the data. We have been working for years to establish our Trojan Horse, now we must use it wisely.

Er, this might help my post make more sense:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2974

I think that every country that has the resources to do it is currently spying on others, but the most common ones to do it are USA and China. Not sure about Russia, but I wouldn't be surprised either. If they are using any security exploits to do it, this is why I always recommend keeping an eye on your bank money or data, in case one day, some random president or government entity would just launch some sort of attack or steal money. Same with computer data. Sadly there isn't much about it that can be done, though, which sucks for us >.<

On a semi related note, has Germany started its own version of the Great Firewall of China like United Kingdom is trying to do? (censoring certain sites, such as one very popular torrent site and its affiliated music promotion service, now requiring a proxy to access them) I don't think Canada did, although in Canada we have weird copyright laws that prevents services like Spotify from launching here and others such as Netflix from offering a selection as good as in USA.

Why do they do that? They don't have the rights for the songs, do they?

YouTube refuses to pay money to the GEMA, so they are not allowed to play songs of members of the GEMA (all major music labels). YouTube says the prices are too high, the GEMA says YouTubes offers are too low. They can't agree on something (probably because the GEMA is too greedy). The GEMA does not block the songs, YouTube does so they don't have to pay.
And yes, this really sucks...

On a semi related note, has Germany started its own version of the Great Firewall of China like United Kingdom is trying to do? (censoring certain sites, such as one very popular torrent site and its affiliated music promotion service, now requiring a proxy to access them) I don't think Canada did, although in Canada we have weird copyright laws that prevents services like Spotify from launching here and others such as Netflix from offering a selection as good as in USA.

In 2010, a law was made to block child pornography ("Zugangserschwerungsgesetz") which was supposed to show a STOP-sign on CP websites, but it was never used and reversed in 2011.
Other than that, we don't have anything similar to the TPB blockades in the UK AFAIK, but some lobby organisations actively fight copyright infringements and took down the largest German movie streaming portal in 2011.

Oh I have this happen a lot here too. Some companies will just delete the videos and ban the accounts, but others will put ads on them then block them in certain countries. There are even vids that get blocked worldwide or in like every country except maybe Sudan.

Sometimes it's random too: For example two of my RIckroll vids in 2009 got blocked worldwide, while others got only blocked in Germany.

Indeed, I wonder if it's due to copyright laws being stronger there or something. I know that some companies like Nintendo were relunctant about releasing stuff in China and Russia, for example, because of the high amount of piracy that reigns there.