[Gllug] Re: EU council streaming petition (Russell Howe)

[Christopher Currie]

On Thursday 04 January 2007 01:01:06 +0000, "Russell Howe" 
<rhowe at siksai.co.uk> wrote:

>
> As for the thread, WMV/ASF is a poor choice of container format for public
> information, and since the CODECs are likely one of the WMV and WMA
> family, again a poor choice of encoding IMHO.
>
> Unfortunately, the problem they face is that whilst Ogg, XviD, Speex,
> etc are all free, open codecs, they are not installed & available by
> default on the vast majority of client devices.

We all know that a crucial component of M$'s monopoly strategy is to prevent 
or discourage its software's users from reading any competitor's formats, 
free or otherwise, whether data formats or hardware media formats. The EU 
should surely understand this and not abet it, if only to protect its own 
staff against subsidiary action should M$ lose any related suits or 
prosecutions.
>
> So I can understand their dilemma (if they even got as far as thinking
> along these lines):

They probably didn't ...
>
> a) Do we make our content accessible to all, using open formats, but
> requiring most users to go and install additional decoding software
> (perhaps meaning we have to go and package appropriate software and
> distribute it, just to make life easy for the people who don't know/want
> to know about digital media formats)?

I don't claim to know about digital media formats, but it took me a few 
seconds of googling to find this:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Codec-Packs-Video-Codecs/DirectShow-Filters-for-Ogg-Vorbis-Speex-Theora-and-FLAC.shtml

and this:
 
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Filters_for_Ogg_Vorbis_Speex_Theora_and_FLAC.htm

So  they would not have had to package or distribute it - at most provide a 
link.

So surely that would have been a better alternative.

The streams of the Council's proceedings are not only important current 
material to all today's viewers, but may be essential evidence in any 
political/legal/juridical dispute or inquiry in ten years' time or even later 
- who actually said what when and what's the evidence? Why shouldn't our 
descendants know about decisions which may still be affecting them? How do we 
know that the closed proprietary format will still be readily accessible 
then? 

Tell  any experienced archivist, professionally concerned with the long-term 
preservation and accessibility of digital data, about this EU decision, and  
I bet you'll be met with 'oh, no, not AGAIN!!!'

Christopher Currie
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