Enforced Ads Coming to Flash Video Players

Dominare writes "The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. 'But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.' This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video."

Comments

Flashblock firefox plugin: view only what you want

[dananderson]

Flash ads used to annoy me, but now that I use the Flashblock plugin to Firefox, I only view the flash I want to (99% of the time flash is an annoying animated ad).

This doesn't take care of ad "previews" on the rare flash you may actually want to see, but nobody is forcing to to watch it.

Obligatory...

[Ariastis]

I, for one, welcome our new flash-based ad-forcing video overlords...

(Makes me sick)

Re:Oh, come on!

[RobNich]

I'm allergic to Windows. I have nothing in the upper right-hand corner. On the upper left-hand corner, I have a red dot, and a yellow dot, and green dot...you insensitive clod!