Let me preface this by saying that I am not in favor of DRM. However, from the perspective of working inside a media company, I can say with certainty that with

Let me preface this by saying that I am not in favor of DRM. However, from the perspective of working inside a media company, I can say with certainty that without some way of "protecting" the media stream, media companies will continue to use flash exclusively for distributing content. Yes, of course you clever folk can find a way around any kind of blockage. That is not the point. It is security theater. It is the media equivalent of asking you to take off your shoes and put them through the x-ray. It does nothing to protect us from any kind of danger, but it is necessary to assuage the fears of powerful people with irrational beliefs. Because, a media company is licensing content from all kinds of different sources. All those sources have to agree that they do not want or need any special protection. It won't do us technologists any good to petulantly insist that they distribute their IP with no DRM. It must be voluntary, and we should direct our efforts to figuring out how get their willing consent. That is, the CONTENT owners. Not the distributors, like the BBC, who have to make the content owners happy or they simply don't get the content. So yes, Trunnel is correct. We need this, or some other equally compelling theater. The alternatives are that we continue to use flash, and iOS apps, or we get no content at all, from the content owners that need the theater to be happy.