[Gllug] EU council streaming petition

[Christopher Hunter]

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 23:20 +0000, John G Walker wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:09:26 +0000 "Martin A. Brooks"
> <martin at hinterlands.org> wrote:
>  
> > We're not talking about software. We're talking about an objection to 
> > publicly funded AV streams only being available in a disagreeable 
> > format.  One that's perfectly decodeable on the platform in question.
> > 
> 
> That's an inaccurate formulation. The last sentence should read "One
> that's - by chance - perfectly decodeable on the platform in question."
> 
> The phrase "by chance" is important. I think, from my reading of the
> thread so far, that people are upset because it's not readable by
> intention. That's the principle involved, not whether or not we've been
> lucky on this occasion and how long our luck will last,

That's exactly right.  It probably won't be long before MS start
charging for each use of their Media Player - "pay-per-use" is
Microsoft's ultimate aim.  The stream may be "free", but the software to
watch it will be expensive to use.  

If the EU sneak through their version of DMCA (as they seem intent on
doing) there will be no legal way for European users of other than
"approved" operating systems and software to view such streams.
Americans are already in this situation - which is why their distros
have all the codecs stripped from them by default!

Chris


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