How to allow all YouTube EDU videos to be viewed but block regular YouTube videos

[jeff3hara]

Hi,

Am with a public school system and we are using the Cisco Ironport S670 WSA for content filtering.

We currently block access to regular YouTube videos for students but would like to allow student access to just the YouTube EDU videos but continue to block access to the regular YouTube videos.  Is there a way to do this?

Thank You!

My email address is jhara@k12.hi.us        

Jeff Hara

[Chris Illsley · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeff,

Not easily, you can write a fairly long regular expression like below, but the way they host their videos doesn't easily lend itself to allowing specific videos.  They also have a habit of changing the way they host every now and then causing existing regexes to be obsolete.

If you tail a grep from the CLI you can see which specific URLs are being blocked, from there figure out the next line of your regex.

Good luck.

Thanks

Chris

youtube\.com/get_player

youtube\.com/get_video_info

youtube\.com/videoplayback

youtube\.com/crossdomain\.xml

youtube\.com/generate

ytimg\.com/.*crossdomain.xml

youtube\.com/.*J0kk3KCpks

ytimg\.com/.*J0kk3KCpks

ytimg\.com/.*vflwCxCa2

ytimg\.com/.*vflHovH55

ytimg\.com/.*vfl3z5WfW

ytimg\.com/.*vflrvDBWB

ytimg\.com/.*vfl1ubMZd

ytimg\.com/.*vfl3UhsQt

[jeff3hara]

Thanks mooncat76.  Was hoping there was an easier way like just filtering on the YouTube EDU channel and allowing all of it's videos.

[Michael Cole]

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/security/web-security-appliance/118130-configure-wsa-00.html

Better late than never I guess, but this might help...  going to try it myself and see if it works.

[Vance Kwan]

I believe you are looking to have the WSA add a custom header to all requests going to Youtube?  You will need to apply with Youtube and get your custom header.  Once you get the custom header, version 7.7 on the WSA (and above) support adding custom headers to be sent which identifies your school's account; ultimately limiting them access to certain videos only.

[Michael Cole]

Vance,

I can see how that would work if your organization is actually the one posting the videos on YouTube, but how would that work for other's curated channels - for example, we would like the federal Trade Commission videos to be available - https://www.youtube.com/user/FTCvideos and I am not following how YouTube would know that we wanted a specific channel (or video) to be available, since it's not content we uploaded.

Thanks,

Mike C