I'm a little unclear what point you're making and how it relates to the
videos in question, which are non-copyright, non-sale/profit and meant
purely to spread knowledge/inspiration to the online community (feel
free to clarify your point).
As I understand it, the motivation behind Youtube making downloads
impossible is primarily because this forces viewers to return to the
webpage where the advertising is.
I feel the only reason YouTube etc have become popular is that they
provide, for free, a webspace where vids can be uploaded. A secondary
reason is that those who take advantage of the free upload space,
often are not aware that a portion of the online community will not be
able to access the vid.
I dislike YouTube strongly, partly because their ethos goes aganist
that of free exchange of information and sharing that the internet is
so useful for: partly because I am involved with several arts like
unicycling and poi which, in years gone by, grew and benefitted from
the easily accessible/downloadable vids posted by enthusiasts-
recently I'm finding that more and more of these are now being put on
YouTube etc, so I don't get to see them.
Despite all that however, if people do wish to use YouTube, then that
is their choice- I accept that, for some, it's more convenient: I just
hope that they acknowledge the other side of the coin and, where
possible, offer, in addition to the Youtube vid, a link to a version
which -can- be downloaded.
Just be aware that plenty of us do not use Youtube etc, either on
principle, or because they are not practical (for example, those not
on broadband).
For the spinning videos I made and uploaded for people to watch, I took
a certain amount of pride in them- I'm happy to know that, years
later, those vids are on peoples harddrives or burnt onto CD/DVD
collections where they can be viewed at will.
I certainly wouldn't feel as much pride if I'd put them on YouTube
where, to watch them the viewer would have to be online and return to
the page where, according to YouTubes priorites, they would be
susceptible to buying whatever is being advertised there: and where a
certain portion of those who would like to view the vid can't, because
they're on dial-up.
Where the future of the vid is entirely dependant on whether, in
Youtubes eyes, it's commercially worthwhile to keep it on their
server.
And that's before we even touch upon the ease with which ad/spy/malware
can be slipped into the various plug-ins/viewers necessary to use some
of these sites.
There -are- issues with simple downloadable formats like wmv/mpeg (for
example, I used to use Divx, then found out that its compression
advatages were ofset by the fact that many couldn't get the codec to
work and that there seemed to be some malware issues with it)- but at
least they're old technology, so the downsides and workarounds are
well-known.
But for most, a basic codec pack and an alternate viewer (media player
classic seems to work really well and play most of the stuff that wMP
can't) will ensure that the vast majority WMV/MPEG/AVI will play.
--
onewheeldave
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the [censored] work for it."
--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
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