Though their motivations may not be so philanthropic, at least consumer electronics corporations are on the side of the people like you and I. After all, they know that consumers will not purchase crippled, copy-protected products. Hopefully, this will result in a somewhat more balanced result when laws are passed. Call me cynical, but I feel that the Hollywood lobby's advantage is quite large and the laws will likely get passed.

The best tool for the job in my contry's government could never be proprietary software. Perhaps it could be "better technically", what ever that means, but I dont care, I want to communicate with my government with open protocols and file formats. Free software always gives us that, proprietary software only when it feels like it (eg when to market or hype something, think Microsoft and XML, and then think Microsoft and .doc files) Priprietary software, especially if the company selling it has a monopoly, can go from open formats to closed ones, in a new release or service pack. We just can never be sure about the company's "commitment to open standards". With Free software we can be sure.