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by kebes (861706) on Tuesday October 02, @01:34PM (#20825693)
(Last Journal: Monday January 08 2007, @03:45PM)

>     All I want is the URL so I can play it with mplayer. I have no intention
> of putting Flash on my machine. Is that so danged difficult??

Actually it would be much, much easier to design a system that just exposed
the URL for a standard video file. The user/browser could then either
download it, or have a plugin that buffers and displays it inside the
browser. This eliminates all kinds of problems both for the web developers
and the user.

But, of course, the real reason for using Flash-based players is that it
acts as a weak form of DRM. The intention is to force the user to watch the
video only at the site (with ads, etc.), and to not allow the user to take
the video, transfer it elsewhere (e.g. iPod), edit out commercials,
redistribute it, etc.

Of course, we all know that it is possible to write a script that extracts
the video... but it becomes a tiresome arms race. This is just another
example of the fundamental tradeoff between the notion of "convenience" (for
the user) and "control" (for the distributor). The user wants freedom. The
distributor wants DRM.