When Rev says "many" that's pretty much ALL isn't it? Amazon, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart,
Napster, all offer DRM standard mp3 files which anyone can play anywhere. They
all TRIED the "protect the content" thing that webmasters, especially those with 1-2
years of experience often post about here. All of them found it to be a failure and
instead opened their systems up to make it as easy as possible for users to use the
content.
Most of the time, saving streamed content is as simple as "view source", copy URL, paste.
So there's no security in that at all. Sometimes it's a little trickier - taking as much as 30
seconds to do rather than 5 seconds. As was mentioned, the people you're worried about,
those who are going to put your content on peer to peer networks and tube sites, know
quite well how to save content which is intended to be only viewed as it's streamed. It's
effectively impossible to stop that when you're dealing with a public internet site, where your
site has to work on most computers. On a private intranet like a university where you control
the hardware, that's another matter. PicFortress, a system we developed many years ago,
can protect the university files because we can install a proprietary player and we can
demand certain features from the video card. (We decrypt the video or image using the GPU
on the video card, so the image never exists in the computer's RAM, making it very difficult
to save).
What leaving out the download link DOES do is force many legitimate users to do the
whole view source, copy URL, paste, save, then watch procedure, or have to cancel
because they can;t see your video at all. This is because they don't
use the same version of Windows Media Player or Flash as you do.
The big example right now is that there is no Flash plugin for 64 bit Vista, so users of
new Windows computers will be canceling if you only offer your videos in Flash.
WMP used to be the most common example of this problem, with a great many sites
accidentally requiring one exact version of Windows Media Player. Those with a
different version couldn't see the video easily and of course people running, Mac,
Linux, or other systems were alienated. Nowadays add mobile platforms to that list
of systems which probably don't support your favorite embedded player, and a
surprising number of Playstation 3s being used to surf porn. Of course now Flash
is the fad. After Flash switched to using MPEG4 as their default video format people
noticed the improved quality ad started serving their videos as Flash packaged mpeg4.
Why not plain unpackaged mpeg4 I have no idea, but you may know what happened next.
Even $500 computers from Wal-Mart starting coming with 64 bit processors, but Flash
wasn't available for 64 bit systems, so many users can't see the (damn) Flash videos.
Although 64 bit processors have been available for many years, until Vista, Windows
users had been stuck running them in 32 bit mode, so Adobe didn't care about 64 bit
support too much - only Mac and Linux people actually USED their 64 bit processors
anyway. So now we have this wonderful state of affairs where a great many web sites
offer only Flash videos, which can't be viewed on 64 bit Vista - pretty much any new
computer isn't going to be able to display your Flash, so you just threw away half your customers for 2009 if you offer only Flash video. I've been warning about Flash compatibility
forever and so many didn't listen. It's _almost_ funny to watch their customers cancel
in droves. What's funnier is that Linux HAS a 64 bit Flash player now and Windows doesn't.
The Linux 64 Flash is a beta version which tends to crash, but for once it's turned
around backwards - a new Linux computer can use youtube, but a new Windows
computer can't.
Pretty much any system capable of surfing the internet has always been
able to save and view standard unpackaged MPEG, either original MPEG or
the current standard MPEG4. So by linking to the MPEG you don't throw
away customers. My phone can play mpeg, a playstation can play mpeg,
a Windows, Mac or Linux computer that's several years old can play
unpackaged mpeg - anyone can join your site if you provide a link
to an unpackaged mpeg file. (Unpackaged meaning not wrapped inside
a .flv, .wmv, .asf or other container file).