Cross domain policy file and BitmapData

Question

Hey guys and gals, I'm having an issue with a Security error
when trying to access photos from an external site. I have a client
who is at siteA.com, who wants to load in photos from siteB.com,
siteC.com, and probably 100 other sites. He has permission to do so
from the other sites, but doesn't want to go through all the
trouble of asking each site to post a cross-domain policy file.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it is, if
you want to simply load an image into a Loader object within a swf,
you're ok, but if you want to access the BitmapData, you will then
get a security error? My snippet of code that I believe is causing
the security error is
public function imageLoaded(e:Event):void {
var image:Bitmap = Bitmap(e.target.loader.content);
image.smoothing = true;
imageContainer.addChild(e.target.loader);
As you can tell, the reason why I want to access the Bitmap
itself is to apply smoothing. That is my main concern, I want to be
able to apply smooth transitions to these pictures that are loaded
in from external sites. My main goal is to load images externally,
then apply smooth transitions, so if you know of a way to get
around the security violations, that would be great. The only
work-around we have for this is to write a script that will load
all the images from the external sites onto the local server, as
this will be less work than getting the cross-domain policy file on
each server (if that's what it takes). Thanks in advance for
anybody who can shed some light on the subject.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, a 'helper' swf would be on the
site where the images are held, much like a cross-domain policy
file? I don't understand how that would be much different than
getting the external sites to add a cross-domain policy file on
their server. It sounds easier to just throw the cross-domain
policy file on the external site's server with '*' for the path of
allowed directories to load images from. I'm pretty new to the
cross-domain security issue, so I'm not sure. I don't understand
why it's a security risk to access the pixels of an image either...
anybody know about that? Just trying to figure out where to go from
here on this project. Thanks for the reply GWD, still looking for
some more feedback.