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I'm not really bothered that much by using a propriertary format because everyday I'm using a thousand things which are proprietary and beyond my control. The example with the car going only on Ford gasoline is not quite accurate: How many parts of a car you buy can you actually decide on? I highly doubt that you get a say on what type and make of air bag Ford used in manufacturing your car.
So, while I have no objections to using proprietory formats if there is no "open" alternative which meets my demands I do prefer to use "standardized" formats (someone already pointed out that that is something gotten mixed up). And if something is standardized it is usually just a question of time until there is some kind of converter into or out of this format (if there is only so much you can keep secret in a standard or it wouldn't be a standard).
What I consider a lot more dangerous is the use of various DRM formats for eBooks. It breaks my heart to think that every book I bought might become unreadable for me once my device stops working and I decide to buy another brand. I find it highly annoying that the book industry seems to have slept through the last couple of years and missed completely what direction music and film is going. People do not want to buy everything again everytime they change their devices, at least not as long as the price is that high. If they charge me 99 cents per book I'd be more willing to re-buy them if I change devices or - if they want to maintain current prices - they company I buy books from should be obliged to change all my DRMed books over to another DRMed format so I could continue using them ( I think Adobe is trying something in that direction but there is a long road ahead).
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