Fortunately, we have been presented with an opportunity that is of the enemy's own making. Even as the computer industry is readying for a major platform shift in a few years, the content industry is likewise planning a major shift in how multimedia is delivered.

New formats, including HD-DVD and Blu-ray, incorporate copy protection technologies that restrict how the content can be used but do nothing to improve the viewer's experience. Coupled with the draconian copy protection systems introduced with Windows Vista, these technologies make PCs less useful, less reliable, and more costly, according to an analysis by security expert Peter Gutmann.

Microsoft's concessions to its partners in the media industry are proof positive that a software company cannot effectively serve two masters. The end-user loses. But so do those other media and software companies that are less than thrilled with the idea of Microsoft controlling the sole delivery mechanism for "premium," high-definition multimedia content.

This is the window of opportunity for free multimedia technologies. If open formats are to succeed, the pressure must come from outside the open source community, and indeed from outside the software industry. It is the media producers -- the record labels, the Internet radio stations, the podcasters, the MySpaces, the YouTubes -- that must make content available using open formats. Only then will end-users begin to adopt them and, eventually, to demand support for them from the device manufacturers and software vendors.