This is why I oppose the Intellectual property (software) patents.
It is obstructing progress.
Pressing the UE to treat his Citizen in a undemocratic and unfairly way.
If you use Cortado flumotion.net/cortado/ as the player. It's a java applet that will play Theora+Vorbis files in a way similar to YouTube/Google Video/etc. All the client needs is Java.
EU must strive to make their information channels available to as many of its citizens as possible.
Not very clever to make a service unavailable to a group of people when there is little (or no) gain in using a closed format.
Locking out free platforms in favor of proprietary monopolistic platforms decreases our freedom. Don't help perpetuate commercial strangleholds on what should be free public information!
The EU is a democracy and information should be freely available to all of its' citizens. Do not discriminate against the poorer part of the population, who cannot afford the software.
It's important for official pronouncements from the council to be correct. Your statement that it cannot be done lawfully is quite flat wrong. You can, and should, legally offer other formats (Theora, MPEG-1). Saying you "can't" just doesn't work technically -- and politically, it stinks of having allowed undue influence from large corporations.
Linux is free. Windows/Mac are not. By denying the Linux option you promote capitalism and leave your self open to claims of corruption. There are plenty of open formats and there is NO good reason for not using them
Maybe it would be easier if we just sold France to Microsoft. But seriously, this preventing people who can't afford proprietary software from receiving information about their government. That sounds pretty criminal to me.
Technically, it it doesn't make sense, legal cross-platform solutions are available.
Politically, it doesn't make sense either to fine Microsoft for monopolism and to help them continuing this way.
So what's left?
Given that Microsoft owns a large proportion of Apple, I believe that providing a service that requires an American controlled operating system is foolish.
