It's not *just* data. It's YOUR data.
Yes:
What about your data?.
Dave Winer: much more important than having access to the source of the program, a program must give you complete control of your content, and for that, you must be able to get a copy. And you must be able to use some other piece of software to read it, that's why interchange formats and protocols are so important.
+1
[Sam Ruby]
In public speaking opportunities I like to redefine this precise thing as 'The True Data Hijacking' (Which is not precisely as it is described by The Threat of XML ).
Question: how much are you "owner" of your articles written in MSWord? What happens if there (for whatever reason) is no Word around to change|view|print *your* article. Scary? It's just us, sheep, that 'accept' any license scheme proposed to us, just because we were allowed to also pay for it? We should at least bounce-back an equal license obliging the vendor eternal free access to OUR own data.
Of course this kindly reminds us of that other content-ownership thing that happened this week: Teen cleared in landmark DVD case.
update: When doing my 'MSWord|ownership' routine in public I used to mention the POI project as a great way out of the catch-22 (as in: I don't want it - someone else did it - I want to read that data!). Recently however my experience is that someone in the audience already knows and just waiting a bit before one of them speaks up just has a bigger effect. This time the audience contained nobody less then Dr. POI himself. :-)
3:21:56 PM
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