Block youtube but allow specific channels?

[pete]

Before I begin, I suspect the answer is "you can't" or "you might be able to, but it'll be flaky or inaccurate".

 

We have SchoolGuardian and there's a channel that the English staff would like students to access because it contains a lot of hard-to-obtain shakespeare performances. Unfortunately there's very little (from what I can see) to tie a video url to a channel.

 

The best I can think of is modifying the proxy so it allows any youtube page (+ associated .flvs) that mentions the (reasonably unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere) channel name, but blocks any page that doesn't have it.

 

Can anyone think of a more elegant way? Downloading 600-odd 20mins-1hr long videos is not an option.

[lucask12]

In my experience, I have generally found that you can't do this with most web filters.

 

YouTube leverages a couple of domains, including (obviously) youtube.com, but also ytimg.com. All content is parsed through their application, but the URLs for the streaming content itself is cryptic or at least obscure.

 

My District has the same problem ("how do we allow access to specific YouTube content?"), and the answer is that we can allow it for certain people (actually, certain Active Directory security groups) and disallow it for others.

 

This doesn't stop someone from watching inappropriate videos on YouTube, but it works for us.

 

If Google were cooperative, they would allow community tagging (categories) for videos. Then, at least the content filter could have something to work with.

 

-lucas

[tom_newton]

OK folks - can't promise anything but we will have a go

 

I'd like to introduce you to another member of the SmoothWall team; Nile Clarke is just signing up for edugeek as I type - he specialises in blocklist stuff, so he'll have a look into this for you, which is fortuitous, as I will be away for 3 weeks

[nile_c]

Hello, I'm the aforementioned blocklist chap. Thanks Tom.

 

I'll have a look into what we can do about this and keep you posted!

[pete]

cheers Tom,

 

Haven't looked at this for a while. PFY has hamthrax, so I'm a bit swamped. There do appear to be areas where the url specifies a channel:

 

"/watch?v=qt-snK3hj_o&channel=itnnews"

 

but that's not always the case.

[nile_c]

1.) Browse to 'guardian > filtering> user defined categories' via the drop-down menu.

 

Under the 'current categories' heading click the checkbox for 'custom blocked content' then click edit.

Expand the advanced options by clicking 'Advanced >>'

 

Copy the following into the 'Absolute and weighted phrases' area:

 

(YouTube - Broadcast Yourself)(101)
(youtube)(user_profile)(user_subs)(120)
(youtube)(class="profile-box" id="user_)(120)
(© 2009 YouTube, LLC)(120)

 

Click the add button, and then the 'apply changes' button which appears.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

2.) Now select 'custom allowed content' and click 'edit'.

 

Expand the advanced options by clicking 'Advanced >>'

Again, we add some rules to 'Absolute and weighted phrases':

 

(youtube)(watchUsername = 'YOUTUBEUSER')(300)

 

Where YOUTUBEUSER is the name of the user/channel you wish to *allow*

e.g. (youtube)(watchUsername = 'DowningSt')(300)

Use one of these lines per youtube channel.

 

Click 'Add', then 'apply changes'.

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

3.) Next we'll create a new category.

 

Remain in the 'user defined categories' section and fill in the following:

 

Name: YouTube

Filter Type: Content and URL filtering

Comment: youtube.com and subdomains

 

In 'Domains and URLs' simply add:

youtube.com

 

 

Click Add, and then 'Apply changes'.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

4.) Now browse to the filters tab near the top of the page.

 

Fill in the following:

 

Name: YouTube domains

Comment: YouTube filter – use with Skip URL Blocking

Type: Content and URL filtering

 

From the tree of categories below, select 'User defined > YouTube'

 

Click Add, Then 'Apply changes'

 

 

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5.) Now browse to the 'Policy' tab.

 

Under policy settings:

 

Group: All groups

Filter: YouTube domains

Time Period: Always

Action: Skip URL blocking (important)

Comment: YouTube exemption (optional)

 

Check the box 'Enabled'.

 

Click 'Add', then 'Apply changes'.

 

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6.) This isn't entirely necessary, but you may wish to force a reset.

 

Navigate to guardian>proxy>webproxy

 

Leave all settings unchanged, hit the 'Save and restart' button.

 

DONE!

 

NB: By default the flash video filetype .flv is blocked.

To remedy this, head to 'guardian > filtering> filters'. Edit the 'File security' filter, de-select the 'Video' component then click 'Add' and 'Apply changes'

[ssiruuk2]

Did the OP try Niles suggestion? Does it work as that is awesome if it does.. nice one.

[pete]

Yeah - it does work. (Well it works once you realise that the channel owner's love of gambling and whiskey drinking, plus the comments are still tripping the proxy ).

 

Got swamped by backlog due to pfy with hamthrax.

[Sylv3r]

Cheers for this Nile. This may become useful.

[ssiruuk2]

Ok thats great - thanks Nile for this.

 

Pete, you know you can get the Smoothwall to remove all comments on Youtube videos if they are tripping the block page ?

 

Think you find it under Content security filters.

[featured_spectre]

set up a profile for the staff to use on youtube on your filtering program, and when its done, link it to your staff group on AD / LDAP. Should work fine, if you spot a link you think is inappropriate that is coming up in your filtering, set it to be blocked. Simple as.

[pete]

set up a profile for the staff to use on youtube on your filtering program, and when its done, link it to your staff group on AD / LDAP. Should work fine, if you spot a link you think is inappropriate that is coming up in your filtering, set it to be blocked. Simple as.

 

Yeah, but in our case youtube is completely blocked for students due to class control / timewasting concerns. The English dept wondered if it was possible to still keep that block in place and allow students to access specific channels. Niles method works so far.

[nile_c]

Thanks folks. Any problems, let me know.

[SteveT]

Upload to teachertube (if not already on it) at home and then access in school that way. Lot easier but does require a modicum of forward planning!! ;)

[pete]

Upload to teachertube (if not already on it) at home and then access in school that way. Lot easier but does require a modicum of forward planning!! ;)

 

Ahahahahahah. Yeah.

 

Has anyone else noticed there's a lot of copyrighted/probably shouldn't be on there content on Teachertube?

[Jose]

This works great,

 

how difficult would it be to use a system like this to block facebook if the page contains certain words.

For example I would like to allow facebook completely but have a block page appear if the page contains certain words.

[rob_f]

SmoothWall does that out of the box - if you're not blocking facebook/social networking it will still analyse every page for porn/weapons/violence/etc and block them if they breach based on phrase content. You could then also put your own phrases in to block in addition to the predefined phrase analyses.

 

In addition, the new post (outgoing) monitoring allows you to block when people post inappropriate things on to facebook, etc. - so you could for example put staff members names into a message censoring list to stop anyone talking about them in statuses, messages, wall posts etc.

[Jose]

ta done it now

[Jose]

if anyone else is using this, you might need to change youtube 2009 to 2010, or it unblocks the site.

[fateh]

Thanks for your thorough explanation. But where can I apply the information you have provided us with.

[tom_newton]

Fateh,

Thios solution is specific to the Smoothwall web filter platform - though if you are using a different web filter, it may be possible to adapt it, in truth, few are flexible (our critics would say complicated..) enough

[plexer]

Tom: Did you get anywhere with being able to ban youtube.com but allow youtube.com/xl ???

 

Cheers.

 

Ben

[tom_newton]

Ben, I believe someone is looking at it. Sort of moot when we get G3 out mind, as that makes it a piece of cake

[featured_spectre]

what is G3...any tech specs on it?

[tom_newton]

what is G3...any tech specs on it?

 

It's our new filtering engine, which is slowly creeping out the door - public betas due to start ASAP. It will come as parrt of the existing smoothwall lineup, but offers a lot more than the existing filter. For example, there's now full who/what/where/when filtering, so you can get as detailed as you need on policies which are completely re-orderable so you chose the importance of each rule. There's also the long awaited "multi group" function, allowing a user to be effectively filtered as a member of two groups. Add to that some performance increases, a new auth front-end with "auth-method by subnet", an easier to use GUI... should be FUN.