The Streaming Service of the Council of the European Union – where you can view live transmissions of ongoing public events or browse the archives – can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users due to the WMV format chosen for the videos!
Quote from the Council’s FAQ page “The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux†Update: this statement has since been omitted
I’ve no doubt there is some screwed up and ill enlightened legislation that could stop support for Linux, they make the laws after all. But haven’t they heard of interoperability?
If the BBC can offer their video services in both WMV and Realmedia formats, why cant the EU?
Shouldn’t all government websites make their content available platform-independent?
First they force Microsoft to market a version of Windows without media-player in accordance with the EU’s antitrust rulings and then they release content that needs that very media player. Only in the EU… you would be forgiven for saying.
Stefan Esterer has formed a petition here for those amongst us that have a thing about Open standards, level playing fields, politics for penguins etc.
via generation-nt
HAPPY NEW YEAR by the way