bucy wrote:
] ]
] ] Here's a hopeless scheme. Microsoft has revealed its DRM
] ] Janus software to the world, named after the Roman god of
] ] gates and doors. An inside joke, a little double
] ] entendre, I gather. It's designed to make your music go
] ] poof after a time, no matter where you put it. That's
] ] appropriate. Whenever I've bought Gates' software, my
] ] money went poof.

Eventually people will learn that using proprietary formats for media means that eventually that media will become inaccessible regardless of what they do to try and preserve it. Either the company will declare the format to be obsolete, or they will simply "go away" as was the case with MovieCD.

MovieCD, for those that don't know, is a format used by a company for distributing movies for viewing on a computer which used a Windows codec that was partially a video driver. More recent versions of Windows will not tolerate this behaviour, and so if one wants to watch these movies again, one must either reinstall Windows98, or find some way to transcode the format to something less proprietary. For the vast majority of their former customers, this simply means that they bought a lot of expensive drink coasters.