Altered form of download

[TripleM]

I'll admit up front that this is a weird request, but hear me out...

I do a lot of listening at work - it helps me through my day.  My employer has recently blocked streaming audio and MP3 downloads.

One thought to get around this, and tell me if it would work or not, would be to have an alternate download format with a different extension from .MP3.  You could use .ZIP because most companies want to have those files come through.  It wouldn't help streaming audio, but quite a few of these companies have the bandwidth to easily support downloads.  People would need to be instructed to change the extension to MP3 once they've downloaded the file.

You wouldn't need to really zip the files, it doesn't buy you much with audio files anyway.  It would just be used as a disguise to get through firewalls and blocking software.

I don't know if this would require that you store both the MP3 and ZIP versions of a song on disk.  This would double your space requirements and therefore make this idea a non-starter.  But if you could programatically change the extention at the time of download, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Is this a bit on the cooky side?  Thoughts?

[TheRealWaldo]

Firewalls and proxies do not block downloads based on file names, they simply block downloads coming from a certain port on a certain machine.

There is some software out there that can filter downloads via. filename, and stop it from being downloaded, but at the same time, these downloads are easily tracked...

The new P2P application, when released, may solve this issue for you, but will require it to be installed on your office machine.

We'll have to see about this, it is possible to do, but could add a great deal of confusion to people who do not know what it's about.  Confusion I'm not sure that I want to be the one to sort out!

[TripleM]

Thanks Waldo.  I agree about the confusion part of the idea.  I didn't realize that FW's can't block based on extensions - thanks for the education.  Blocking software sure can!!

I'd be interested in the P2P application.  Keep me posted.

I didn't understand your comment on blocking software when you said, "...these downloads can be easily tracked."  Did you mean easily "tricked?"  Please elaborate.

[TheRealWaldo]

Tracked, as in the moderator of the software, firewalls, routers, etc. has easy access to information as to what you are transfering and from where.

So, they can quickly track down that you are bypassing the system, and nail you again....