As terrible as it sounds, it is the only way to get big content providers on
board with HTML5. They want their streaming content locked down becuase they
fear the openness of the internet and think people will steal everything it
is more open.
I have a friend who works for a company and their client wanted streaming
video and they used Silverlight. I asked him why they used that instead of
HTML5 and he said the main reason was because the client demanded DRM. If
they didn't put in a type of DRM protection and released the videos anyways,
their company would have been in big trouble and had potential litigation on
top of losing the client. I brought the issue about Silverlight not working
well on Linux and he said it really didn't matter as long as it worked fine
on Windows and Mac OSX.
I then brought it to his attention that the content itself was copyrighted
and even if the person were to get a local copy of the MP4 or WebM, the video
itself belonged to the original copyright holder and it didn't matter if
someone shared. I know this brings comparisons to someone sharing a TV show
that aired for free "over the air" (like NBC station in the USA) and was
released on BitTorrent. Of course that is different because the stations rely
on advertising and that advertising is removed from the torrented file. The
file for my friend's client would not contain ads and the video would be the
same no matter if it was streamed or played locally.
Speaking of streaming, DASH could fill a lot of gaps in adaptive streaming
and bring less reliance on Flash, Silverlight, and proprietary technology
from Apple and Microsoft:
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=57623
