I find it appalling that my taxes are somehow paying for this sort of short sighted measures, bordering on incompetence.
I won't bother pointing out why this sort of justification makes no sense whatsoever, as the information is readily available to anyone who bothers spending 10 minutes researching free/open codecs and platform agnostic distribution of content.
The EU should strive to make technology and communications more open. This would include closed platforms offered by two commercial entities, one of whom has a stranglehold on standards and the market in general.
They do sites that can be used by blind, disabled and other people... but not by Linux users. That's discrimination that can not be explained by technical means.
US commercial power has become too intrusive in to our daily lives. If the EU can not protect us from US interests in favour of EU ones what is the point of having an EU at all... We are Europeans not US citizens!!
The European Council should have a leading role when it comes to adopting free and open standards that enable people to comminicate and interact with the EU. Excluding Linux/bsd/etc. users from the "Streaming Service of the Council of the European Union" should be reconsidered, since there are alternatives to the closed format that is used currently. By using an appropriate open format, none of the existing users will be excluded, while at the same time most of the currently excluded users will be included. It is a win-win situation for all of us.
PS:
Even though we are a minority, we do pay taxes :-)
There shouldn't any prerequisites for streaming regarding of operating system.
Today, many countries are asking for interoperability concerning ITs, and actual technical decisionisn't viable in this way.
Go change it.
"Cannot support Linux in a *legal* way"?
Why not use an open video standard? No government should ever use a proprietary standard for public content.
I am shocked by the EUs incompentence in the matter.
To take part in or to follow the political life in the EU, interested citizens are forced to spent money on proprietary software while there are open standards that provide the same service.
The Council of the EU should think of itself as an example for others and use open standards that are accessible for everyone.
In my opinion EU should not by ANY condition use ANY MS Software. Why? How many of you want to support by paying taxes all those AV companies and whatever spyware/malware prevention programs? They should be using Open source unix'es all the way from servers to PC's.
there are free software alternatives to wmv streaming, if you have to go down another route, then you can use realmedia. that would work on linux also.
If not streaming media, at the bare minimum, the EU should provide archived content in other formats to ensure these videos reach the largest audience. Other institutions and even companies do it now.
