Blocking Music websites

[ChrisH]

Ok todays project is..... Blocking all the content from these music websites. I have mime and filetype blocking at my disposal and have blocked the obvious .wma and mp3 but they still seem to be able to play stuff. I am suspecting its through some kind of flash program or applet or something.

I would be interested in hearing other people strategies.

 

TIA

[fooby]

Psexec mute.exe

 

muahahahahah

 

 

 

We tend to block most of the websites to start with, youtube,google video,myspace etc. And yes, a lot of these sites are using flash player.

 

fooby

[ChrisH]

Im currently banning flash apart from last 10 mins of lesson. This is stopping the music and most games. Im going to play with some banned phrase combos as well.

 

I am still open to suggestions though.

[fooby]

Depends on the class, some of the IT teachers here allow students music as long as they produce the work. if the work is not done then they lose email access and arent allowed to play lan games when every1 else who has finished is allowed. this gets them working more and not mucking about with music. I think its more classroom management more than network blocking needed, although ABTutor is goood for blocking flash for persistent offenders and the IT teachers here are used to doing this.

 

fooby

[webman]

Other popular extensions include wma, asx, asf, pls, m3u, ogg.

[MkII]

Music allowed here just as fooby says.

 

I just locked out mp3s but the school now wants to leave them open for teaching reasons and instruct the kids on proper use. (which I agree with)

[ChrisH]

The main reason I am getting rid of music is the bandwidth it is using up. It's pretty much grinding us to a halt.

[StewartKnight]

how are you blocking the flash Mark?

[ChrisH]

I assume you mean me since Mark hasnt mentioned flash. I am blocking it at the proxy. At the moment I can just turn it on or off but with the new consornet I will be able to schedule these restrictions.

[bishopsgarthstockton]

Radio station sites were grinding us to a halt. solution to the problem was to block the sites and only open them at end of term i.e. christmas and summer time.

 

I don't think kids can listen to music and get top marks in the GCSE's

 

Mp3, wma are deleted from the server weekly. I just say we are breaking copyright laws, pluss when you find about 10 copies of bloody 2pac on the server it gets a little silly.

 

 

If you block flash, how do the kids get on to bbc bite size and other educational website games.

 

another political argument with staff, kids and the Geeks

[ChrisH]

 

If you block flash, how do the kids get on to bbc bite size and other educational website games.

 

another political argument with staff, kids and the Geeks

 

Educational sites are put in a whitelist and they do not get filtered.

[fooby]

@bishopsgarthstockton: How do you do a weekly scan / delete?

 

and

 

@ChrisH: How do you do this?

 

I'm sure there are many threads on how to do these things (i dont want to hijack this one but please point me in the direction)

 

fooby

[bishopsgarthstockton]

@fooby

 

search keeps a history of what you last searched for. i have it search for the useral music file extensions.

 

i just set it to search the users folder and walk away. i then just organze user names and delete what i think shouldnt be there. only takes 5 to 10 min. so it dosent take much effort. i have it search for . bat, compresed and .exe files too.

 

just another simple house keeping job that dosent take to much effort.

[ChrisH]

@bishopsgarthstockton: How do you do a weekly scan / delete?

 

and

 

@ChrisH: How do you do this?

 

I'm sure there are many threads on how to do these things (i dont want to hijack this one but please point me in the direction)

 

fooby

 

The thing that does this behind the scenes is dansguardian. You can do your own box or use something like Censornet v3 which is free or pay for V 4 which is quiete cheap or get something like School Guardian from Smoothwall.

[fooby]

Cool, thanks to you both - will investigate