A frightening Cringely editorial:

As Bill Gates has proved over and over, the secret to making money is owning a de facto standard, and Microsoft is determined to do this in digital media.

It is a brilliant strategy. Microsoft claims to have 450 million free copies of Windows Media Player in circulation. They have offered Windows Media as an industry standard, which doesn’t mean they don’t make money from it. Becoming a SMPTE standard means that all the other manufacturers will have to come into compliance with Windows Media, and will have to pay Microsoft a royalty if they want to interoperate — just as they have to pay Sony and Philips for every CD player. And in the Microsoft Windows Media Protocol License, it says that any Windows Media files have to start their journey to your TV or PC from a Windows origin server, thus building Windows into the very heart of the future of media delivery.

I hope (pray) it doen’t play out this way. And I don’t think it will, because Microsoft will make the fatal mistake of trying to push DRM on consumers. By the time they figure out that consumers won’t accept it, another de facto, DRM-free (and probably open) standard will have established itself. Besides, who gives a f**k about streaming media when we have Bit Torrent?