EU streaming service Linux ban
p2pnet.net News:- “Welcome to the Streaming Service of the Council of the European Union,” says the site. “Here you can select to view live transmissions of ongoing public events at the Council or browse in our archives.”
The trouble is, you can only do that if you’re running a Windows or Apple system.
Linux ist verboten.
However, it should be available for everybody, says an online demand.
“Please unlock the streams so that I can watch themwhitout buying into Microsofts illigal monopoly(as defined by both the US government and by theEU),” pleads Mick Roberts.
“I use linux, and I vote,” says James McNeill.
“Change the service in that way, that also linux/bsd/.. user can use it,” states the petition. “One Solution would be to use the free theora codec for the videos.”
Some 4,031 people had signed when we had a look at 12:16 pm Pacific.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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January 1st, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Under Firefox add the “User Agent Switcher” extension and identify your browser as IE under XP. Also have MPlayer plugin and w32codecs installed. The streams play quite happily under Linux using this method. I agree that you should not have to do this, but the same problem occurs all over the web, often because over zealous web developers insist on getting your Windows Media Player version prior to sending the stream. This is unnecessary – it plays or it does not. It makes them feel good for a job well done, but locks out Linux/BSD users for absolutely no reason.
It is ironic that the EU who continually battle Microsoft’s monopoly are doing their dirty work for them, probably without the politicians even knowing it.
January 1st, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I don’t see what the big ol’ deal is here… just install some freakin’ codecs.
I just went to that link and browsed the archives and everything played just fine, nice and smooth.
I’m using Fedora Core 6, Firefox 2.x, MPlayer, MPlayer essential codecs pack, and finally the MPlayer-plugin which plays the embeds in Firefox.
While the codec that is being used by that web-site may be proprietary, is certainly is not a problem to play in many Linux distros using open-source codecs. I find I can actually play MORE stuff with MPlayer than I can in Windows Media Player (which BTW I also can run in Linux thanks to WINE win32 emulation.)
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
Under Firefox add the “User Agent Switcher” extension and identify your browser as IE under XP. Also have MPlayer plugin and w32codecs installed. The streams play quite happily under Linux using this method. I agree that you should not have to do this, but the same problem occurs all over the web, often because over zealous web developers insist on getting your Windows Media Player version prior to sending the stream. This is unnecessary – it plays or it does not. It makes them feel good for a job well done, but locks out Linux/BSD users for absolutely no reason.
It is ironic that the EU who continually battle Microsoft’s monopoly are doing their dirty work for them, probably without the politicians even knowing it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:00 am
Yeah, too bad mplayer needs wmv9dmod.dll which is *NOT* open source to play these streams. You’ll find it contained in your “essential codecs” package, along with a whole slew of binary only windows codecs.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:01 am
Yeah, too bad mplayer needs wmv9dmod.dll which is *NOT* open source to play these streams. You’ll find it contained in your “essential codecs” package, along with a whole slew of binary only windows codecs.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:11 am
whoops, wrong parent
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
..
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
the problem is that if you are using the win32 codec in linux you are forced to beaking the law because it violates some patent witch belongs to microsoft
So by not providing a free format for there webcast the EU is not only discriminating Linux and bsd users, they also forces us to break the patent law of EU
btw i also think its a bit of a dubble moral that EU is accusing Microsoft for using illigal practesis and supporting the development of OSS
and on the other hand they discriminates linux users from wieving there webcasts witch is a public and a democracy thing.
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:08 am
I dont think those codecs you speak of are legal
January 7th, 2007 at 1:49 am
i use ubuntu linux , and with this firefox extension , it works fine –>
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/24402/
February 28th, 2007 at 1:53 pm