The Government Should Not Use Closed Source Proprietary Formats

I just tried to watch a recording of yesterday's Senate Finance Committee hearing on Hedge Fund returns and University Endowments. Guess what? The recording is in .ram format and will only play with Real Player. Just great, I'm not going to install Real Player just to watch this, so forget it.

But step back, why should the Senate Finance Committee rely on proprietary software that depends on a corporation's support to run, to disseminate public information? Public information should be released in open formats that can be guaranteed to run across all systems. And why, essentially is RealNetworks the beneficiary of the Senate's corporate welfare? It would be absurd on face if congress were to pass a bill forcing thousands of people to use Real Player, or pass a bill to give RealNetworks customers, yet, that's essentially what their website is doing, when a proprietary Real Media format is the only format that public proceedings are released in.

I guess it's to be expected, their website is ass ugly, and contains this wonderful little tidbit.

This site is optimized for Netscape Navigator 4.x or Internet Explorer 4.x, with an 800x600 screen resolution.