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General Software Discussion / Proprietary media formats — time to get rid of them!
« Last post by zridling on June 21, 2008, 10:04 PM »Proprietary media formats like WMV, MOV, and WMA need to go. Many of the same arguments for open standards (e.g., OASIS OpenDocument (ODF) format) apply here:
With proprietary media comes the dreaded DRM. PCMag's Bill Machrone talks about how: [DRM] has become a circus act in which we're trained dogs that jump through media companies' hoops. Their goal is to resell us every song, TV show, and movie each time there's a new format and to control how and where we consume the content.
I'm not about to rip someone/some company off, but the point of a proprietary media format is restriction, not collection or sharing. Be gone already!
- you should be able to do anything whatsoever with media (you create);
- users will migrate toward software and devices that play open format media;
- EVERYONE can implement a true, open standard, and it increases competition and choice;
- the world is shifting to non-proprietary open standards based on the amazing success of the web, a success that was far more important than any single vendor’s market position or ideas for what was right for the world. (Imagine if the web had started out as a proprietary entity! Thanks to the DMCA, a public library could never been conceived and built in this century — "You can't share that book among more than one person, you criminal!)
With proprietary media comes the dreaded DRM. PCMag's Bill Machrone talks about how: [DRM] has become a circus act in which we're trained dogs that jump through media companies' hoops. Their goal is to resell us every song, TV show, and movie each time there's a new format and to control how and where we consume the content.
I'm not about to rip someone/some company off, but the point of a proprietary media format is restriction, not collection or sharing. Be gone already!
