I think a reasonable middle road, since most people won't notice or care about the difference, is to support something lossless like flac but not make it the de

I think a reasonable middle road, since most people won't notice or care about the difference, is to support something lossless like flac but not make it the default. The people who really care could turn it on (perhaps at the account level), and they'd be happy, and YouTube still saves on bandwidth costs.