GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
"Security" is not a valid excuse
A couple of days ago Aaron Wolf wrote to libreplanet-discuss: (typically quiet/inactive)
Theora support removed from browsers, GNU.org issues
I just sent someone a link to [1]https://www.gnu.org/education/ only to then find that modern browsers won't play the video there at all! I searched and found things like [2]https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1860492 I guess it seems unfortunate but maybe GNU.org can just update any Theora-related files like the .ogv there and use an updated WebM format? This is urgent in that we don't want people unable to see GNU media when working to spread free software understanding! Aaron -- Aaron Wolf co-founder, Snowdrift.coop music teacher, wolftune.com
References
1. https://www.gnu.org/education/ 2. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1860492
When we began making many videos in 2020 (the second COVID-19 lock-down) we used Ogg, but soon we realised that more and more people lost browser support for Ogg, mostly because Google and Alphabet Mozilla (controlled by Google financially) was deprecating support for it, as it had done RSS/Atom. Sooner or later only the Google-controlled formats would be widely supported (along with the MPEG cartel), so we had to adopt .webm or be told by readers they cannot play our videos.
This is another good example of GAFAM dominating not just the Web but also multimedia, including offline media. This sort of dominance needs to be tackled.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has PlayOgg.org (PlayOgg!), but now it just redirects to the FSF's site:
PlayOgg.org is no more.
Many of our early videos are difficult to play now because GAFAM is working to deprecate support for their format/encoding. █