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How to block YouTube but allow embedded videos

November 03, 2011 • Customer Services       

Synopsis

Article

YouTube is a fantastic resource for video but it can also be a huge distraction. In some cases you may want to block YouTube but allow certain videos to still be accessible. You can do this with CensorNet Professional by using YouTube's embedded URL's.

An embedded URL looks like this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/8QvW1XETz2g

Normally, if you browsed the YouTube web site to find the same video, the URL would look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&v=8QvW1XETz2g

The problem with the latter is that CensorNet Professional's URL module does not scan the query string, that is everything past the question mark (?). As a result, CensorNet only sees http://www.youtube.com/watch. As you can see, the embedded URL takes the form youtube.com/v/<VIDEO ID> so you can create an embedded URL from any normal YouTube URL with this simple procedure.

Step 1 - Create a custom URL category for YouTube videos

Go to Filters -> Custom URL -> Categories and in the Add New Category box enter "Allow YouTube Embedded URLs" and click Add.

Now click on the newly created category name in the list. This will take you to the URL Manager.

You can now enter in the embedded YouTube video URL's into the new category.

To allow embedded YouTube videos you must add the following two URL patterns to this category:

.youtube.com/crossdomain

.youtube.com/get_video_info

You can now decide whether to allow all embedded videos or just specific ones. To allow all embedded videos add the following URL (note: this means anyone who knows how to convert a YouTube video into an embedded URL will be able to view the video):

.youtube.com/v

It is recommended however that you only allow specific videos using the full embedded URL notation:

.youtube.com/v/<video ID>

Step 2 - Change your policy

Now go to Policies -> Manage Policies and select your policy. You may have to repeat this for each of the policies you want to allow YouTube embedded videos in.

For this to work as expected, the "If rules conflict" option should be set to the default, which is "Block rules override allow rules".

Scroll down to the Custom URL module and locate the custom URL category you created above (e.g. Allow Embedded YouTube URLs) and set it to Allow.

Scroll down to the Content Classifier module and locate the Streaming & Downloadable Video category and set it to Block. This ensures the main YouTube video site is blocked.

Click the Update Policy button and then wait for the policy changes to be applied (default 5 minutes).

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