how could you restrict your citizens with closed formats, as WE are the one paying the taxes for YOUR service , and WE are the ones wanting to see that ?
Really odd, and shameful behaviour. The Swedish national radio has long had support for both Windows and Real Audio formats. This is the least you could do .. the best choice, however, is using Theora. Like many people like me already have said.
Whoever has advised you that this is illegal needs to check their facts.
Since many companies produce streaming video for Linux products, I fail to see why the EU cannot do this.
Make the effort and stop supporting convicted monopolists. Your actions merely support them.
Why not use a free legal streaming video format? This way your videos will be cheaper to produce and archive in the long term. Don't forget: the media is not the message. You want people to watch these movies, no?
So go and make it possible!
There are various open formats for streaming video and it makes no sense not to use one of them. Surely the aim is to give allow the greatest number of computer users access the stream? Picking a proprietry format is just plain stupid in this case...
It should be illegal for any public body to effectively levy a charge on public information by requiring licensed software to view it. Typical of the total idiocy in the EU unfortunately.
On one hand your are supporting open formats and on the other hand this?
It is a fundamental right that everyone has access to EU records etc, so are Linux users excluded from it?
It is apparent for EU to support truly free and open systems/platforms like linux in every single aspect; it abides to the major principals upon which the european nations have decided in order to create the union
Th EU should get off its collective lazy ass. And fire the incompetent losers responsible for this decision. There are plenty of solutions that would provide better quality AND be more accessible to other plattforms.
Out of all the codecs that you could have picked for streaming, you picked pretty much the only one that excludes linux. Stop supporting proprietry non-standards, and support real standards please.
Please look at the ogg container format and perhaps theora.
For company provided support you could go to fluendo.com (which happens to be Eropean - and no I do not work for or with them).
After all the pressure the EU has been putting on microsoft to open up its file formats etc to allow alternatives such as Linux to grow and to allow interoperability. The EU is being totally hypocrytical and nieve in its view that it cannor provide a legal way of streaming video. If this is the technical knowledge and ability of the system admins who advise and maintain the EU systems then perhaps they ned to have a serious re-think as to who they employ. You cannot fine a company millions of euros for vendor lock in and then do exactly the same thing yourself. The EU is not a private company who exists to crush opposition and remain secretive and closed it is owned by the people and for the people and should NEVER forget this and as suc should use vender nuetral and totaly open formats and processes.
Commercial and proprietary multimedia formats are not suitable for public services. It would like imposing to the citizens the use of the pens and papers made by a single manufacturer at schools. Even carbon pencils would be outlaw!
Frigging hypocrites... They sue MS for being monopolist, yet they use their formats for their own broadcasts! Heck, could anyone be more inconsequent??
FOSS for life!
This is absurd. I used to work for a video surveillance company as a developer for video streaming software on Linux. There are plenty of open video stream formats.
Please do not forget the steadily growing and often politically very active Linux community.
Please go and look at the free alternatives for streaming media. There are a lot of options. I don't see any legal problems in using one of the free video codecs?
Please do your homework before telling people it is not possible
Information concerning public institutions should be offered in open formats; no one should be forced to buy software to view information relating to public institutions which function thanks to public funds. It is not democratic, nor is it ethical.
Please provide a paltform independant way to view the council. By not doing this you are being complicit in an unjustified transfer of wealth and power from the general public to a private corporation. This directly contadicts the moral justification of the governance of the European Union. Please stop giving preferential treatment to Microsoft.
This is ridiculous. 'The answer' to the problem is to switch to an open format that every platform can watch. Yes, you can support Linux legally, so _do_ it.
You are failing to represent the people in the EU who use open source software.
Remembering that the server where the videos are located on a server running open source software (PHP at the very least) - *you* are a user of open source too.
I'm a user of all sorts of alternative platforms, from the UK.
In what way can't you "support Linux in a Legal way"? There are free and open formats available all of which would mean that we will be able to view the content in 20+ years, guaranteed. The same cannot be said for WMV.
The Council of EU is showing bias, ignorance and is strong evidence of being bought out by a convicted monopolist.
It is showing bias by favouring a video format OF A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST.
It is showing ignorance by not doing it's research and offering multiple solutions, including those that work on Linux and on a cross platform basis.
Lastly, the individuals that made this decision should be fired, because the ONLY way they could of made this decision was through bribes by our common enemy - a convicted monopolist.
Shame on you for being so ignorant and morally corrupt.
The EU should use open formats for informing his citizens. If there are no open formats which would do the job, then the EU should invest in creating one or help debvelop one.
By using proprietary formats the EU council prevents a growing number of Linux users from accessing its information services.
since when do politicians decide what we, the people, must use to follow their endless debates ? A huge lack of knowledge is once again painfully clear. We, the people of europe, need an OPEN standard, not a commercial one.
As a Swedish (and therefore European) citizen living abroad, and an open source software user, I believe that for the EU support closed source and non-gpl'd software solutions is to undermine the Union's stance on accessibility and access.
As a British (and therefore European) citizen living abroad, and an open source software user, I believe that for the EU support closed source and non-gpl'd software solutions is to undermine the Union's stance on accessibility and access.
