[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Elliotte Harold]

Gervase Markham wrote:

> I think there's a strong driver for uptake. As I understand it, all 
> these video-sharing sites are paying mountains of cash to 
> Adobe/Macromedia for the backend software licences to support Flash 
> video streaming. If they could have 15 or 20% fewer servers doing that, 
> and stream to Firefox using Theora instead, the cost saving would be an 
> incentive for them to change their site. Particularly if we implemented 
> <video> in a way which gave them all the capabilities the flash player 
> has - e.g. fast forward, rewind, seek etc.

But there's one capability of Flash I don't want to give them: the 
ability to block users from easily downloading, editing, and reusing the 
content.

You may be right, and I hope you are, but I suspect content hording may 
be important enough to them to justify the extra 15% or 20% cost.

OTOH, this might enable lower cost, less hordeful competitors, That 
would be nice.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
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