That's a lot of wasted bandwidth, even if the conversion rate is 5%, which I'm sure it's not even close to that. The benefit to the consumer is minimal and the cost to the provider is significant; it's a bad business decision.
I agree that the server should be set up to only serve up what the client is authorized to view, however, A) it's not necessarily Adobe's server software--you can serve FLV files from any server, and stream from alternatives like Red5, and B) it's not the server's configuration that allows the file to continue to stream; it's a flaw in Flash Player 9 and below that doesn't allow the developer to cancel HTTP requests. This will be fixed in Flash Player 10, but as of right now exists as a limitation.
Flash Player has had the critical flaw of not being able to cancel HTTP requests for years. This causes all kinds of problems for Flash / Flex developers across the board, not only for media streaming applications.
Adobe has finally implemented a fix in Flash Player 10--which should be out of beta in the next few weeks--that allows the developer to actually cancel a request and stop the stream. The development community has been bringing this to Adobe's attention for years, and why it has only yet to be addressed is beyond me--it seems so basic.
I agree that it isn't a great idea to use the actual media for a preview versus creating a separate preview version, but this flaw makes it extremely easy to grab any file that Flash requests.
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That's a lot of wasted bandwidth, even if the conversion rate is 5%, which I'm sure it's not even close to that. The benefit to the consumer is minimal and the cost to the provider is significant; it's a bad business decision.
I agree that the server should be set up to only serve up what the client is authorized to view, however, A) it's not necessarily Adobe's server software--you can serve FLV files from any server, and stream from alternatives like Red5, and B) it's not the server's configuration that allows the file to continue to stream; it's a flaw in Flash Player 9 and below that doesn't allow the developer to cancel HTTP requests. This will be fixed in Flash Player 10, but as of right now exists as a limitation.
Flash Player has had the critical flaw of not being able to cancel HTTP requests for years. This causes all kinds of problems for Flash / Flex developers across the board, not only for media streaming applications. Adobe has finally implemented a fix in Flash Player 10--which should be out of beta in the next few weeks--that allows the developer to actually cancel a request and stop the stream. The development community has been bringing this to Adobe's attention for years, and why it has only yet to be addressed is beyond me--it seems so basic. I agree that it isn't a great idea to use the actual media for a preview versus creating a separate preview version, but this flaw makes it extremely easy to grab any file that Flash requests.