[whatwg] More YouTube response

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 3:09 PM, John Harding <jharding at google.com> wrote:
> Yes, it's pretty straightforward to offer <iframe>-based embed code, but it
> needs to be coupled with getting sites to accept them, or we end up with a
> lot of confused, unhappy users.

This will only happen if the <iframe> support is widely advertised,
though.  I assume that practically everyone who embeds YouTube videos
just copies the code given under the video.  If <iframe> support were
only mentioned in out-of-the-way places (like only if you've opted
into the HTML5 beta) and labeled with "only use this if you're sure
you don't want the normal embed code", it would allow people who cared
to use it, and they could push sites to whitelist it if any don't.

This is probably low-priority from your perspective, I can see that.
But it's pretty sad when the IE blog is now consistently using <video>
instead of Flash, while the Chrome blog only uses Flash embeds
(because of the YouTube dependency).

> Note that sites don't generally whitelist
> specific SWFs - they generally allow all Flash embeds.

I'd be very surprised if major sites allowed arbitrary Flash but not
arbitrary <iframe>.  The former is extremely dangerous, the latter is
not (although it could still create annoying popups, etc.).  Do you
have an example of such a site?

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au> wrote:
> YouTube would do better to address this issue by bringing the major players
> in the content industry to the table to discuss methods of publishing their
> content in interoperable ways without DRM.

Given how many lawsuits those major players have filed against Google
*despite* concessions on DRM, I don't think it's practical to suggest
that Google should provoke them even *more*.  However, this isn't
something standards groups have to deal with, since standardized DRM
is more or less a contradiction in terms (in the absence of hardware
support).  Flash can continue to be used for video indefinitely where
DRM is desired, just as Flash is occasionally used for still image
galleries to prevent easy copying.