Proxy question

[germdoc]

I have used the subscription music service Rhapsody at home and at work for over a year. Recently, at work our lovely Websense filter decided to outlaw this website. Interestingly, I can play old songs I have played before but cannot access new ones. (My playlist now exceeds 7000 songs, so it could be worse.)

I talked to our IT folks and they said they don't see a reason to filter out Rhapsody but there's nothing they can do about it, because that decision belongs to Websense.

I've tried some proxy services to access the Rhapsody website and can get to the website, but I'm unable to actually play music by clicking on the song links.

Any suggestions??

Besides telling me to actually do some work instead of hacking around??

[Tom Miller]

Any suggestions??

Yeah, I've got a suggestion for you...

Besides telling me to actually do some work instead of hacking around??

Oh, never mind.

My sense is that these filters are not very smart, and can in many cases block way more than they should. But I'm surprised that specific URLs can't be unblocked by your IT folks. I thought that was a standard option.

Regards,
Tom

[linear]

I talked to our IT folks and they said they don't see a reason to filter out Rhapsody but there's nothing they can do about it, because that decision belongs to Websense.

To be generous about it, they are misrepresenting the truth a bit. There are a couple of abstractions websense uses to permit/deny access. The websense product comes with a subscription to their service, which only categorizes sites (really fully qualified domains) into categories. The local administrators build policy sets on those categories, and then in turn map them to users or groups of users. So possible solutions look like: a) approving the category for rhapsody, or b) adding you to a group with that category already approved (like the group with the CEO in it ).

Over and above that, the local admins can explicitly whitelist a domain. This overrides websense's categorization and lets the traffic through.

FWIW, "proxy avoidance" is a category in websense, so defeating websense is likely not as simple as finding an open proxy and hopping through it.

I know way more about this than I want to, becuase we use the dodgy thing here and my personal sites are constantly getting miscategorized by their algorithms. So I know sites can be whitelisted. If you get miscategorized, there's a way to file a change request, but it's only for paying customers, not hapless site owners.

[sacherjj]

I know that nph-proxy seems to work fine for web pages. (Not that I use it on my web site for getting to bt3central instead of the "discussion forums,hobbies/interest" access denied message, while at work or anything... ) It is a cgi script that you drop in cgi-bin. Not sure how it would work with streaming media though... It also makes things interesting to post URLs or copy them, because they are "encoded" to be passed as an argument to the proxy.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I hate Websense. When I was in a corporate office environment it increased by productivity by 28.485%.

[germdoc]

I hate Websense. When I was in a corporate office environment it increased by productivity by 28.485%.

??

I would be so much MORE productive if I could listen to the back catalogues of Eric Clapton and Cream, the Faces, T. Rex and James Brown any #*&$%'ing time I wanted to.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

??

I would be so much MORE productive if I could listen to the back catalogues of Eric Clapton and Cream, the Faces, T. Rex and James Brown any #*&$%'ing time I wanted to.

LOL, I hear ya. A never ending loop of "All Along The Watchtower" by Hendrix, Dylan or the Dead would do it for me.

Do you know if it blocks Sirius feeds? If you have a Sirius subscription you can listen to current programming online.

[germdoc]

Well, the Stones and Who are rockin' out again on my work computer.

Previously, when I went to Rhapsody's website and clicked on a musical selection, it would give me a blocked site message. But, yesterday I right-clicked the link and selected Google's "translate to English" and voila! it worked! A poor man's proxy...

Now it works consistently without any finagling, so I must have reinstalled the cookies.

I'm not sure what it says about our security software that a determined idiot like me can hack into a forbidden site. I just know that I have access to "over 2 million songs" at work, any time I want to listen to them.

[vaking]

It is true that IT people can technically open some websites for you by putting you into a group that has access to sites categorized as "Internet Radio". Whether they have authority to do that is a different question. It depends on your environment. In a place where I am this is all controlled by the concept of "Business need". If your business manager will send a request stating that your job description requires you to have access to "Internet Radio" - you will have it. These are questions for HR and corporate policies, IT people are not decision makers on that.
BTW, in my place streaming media is by default blocked in itself. It can be open if you need to listen for broadcasts for business needs.
And if you could bypass some security measures so easily - good for you. It means your IT folks don't want to spend too much money on it. I am sure it can be made tougher.

[LCHIEN]

I'm guessing wildly but I'll bet if 5-10% of the people in a good sized office all elected to listen/watch streaming media the bandwidth left for real work would go to near zero.

[vaking]

Loring,
Your guess is correct - this is one big reason streaming media is blocked by default in large companies. If a corporation wants to enable wide usage of streaming media it has to deploy internal broadcast server. If every user needs to run individual stream over corporate Internet pipe - that will spell the end of Internet connectivity for that company.
Another reason is that if many people in the cubicle or office space environment are listening to radio or other ambient music - everybody would need earmuffs. This stereo-phonic Rhapsody will overpower the dust collector.

[bfrikken]

Try this one out. I know it works for websurfing:
http://www.monkeysigns.com/jprox/index.jsp