The problem comes when standards can be changed by whoever controls it to benefit one particular vendor as happens constantly in PC media players. For example Microsoft could improve VC-1 in future (say VC-2 standard) and refuse to license it to anyone else so that you could only use it on Windows Media Center or Windows Vista. Alternatively, they could charge a very high price for it's use so that other player manufacturers would be at a disadvantage. Another thing they could do is to incorporate seemingly innocuous licensing terms that prevent competing vendors from using it. An example of this is the open source programs (eg. embedded Linux) which the majority of embedded device manufacturers use in set top boxes and media decoders which require the license to be sublicensed on to the end user. By putting in a requirement for a written and signed license to be taken out directly with Microsoft for every sublicense, Microsoft can make it impractical to use VC-2 with embedded any media player other than Windows CE. This very tactic has been used only a couple of months ago by Microsoft to prevent it's supposedly open standard for MS Office formats OpenXML and it's Windows networking protocol to prevent it's only real competitors OpenOffice and Samba from using them.
No one other than Microsoft can improve VC-1 because they own all the patents to it and control the standards "commitee" that is supposed to manage it.
The answer to your post is no: a "standard" controlled and owned by a single company is not a standard, but a monopoly lock-in. Standards should be controlled by a neutral standards body which no single vendor can control. Ideally, to be a truely open standard, it should also be royalty free (because high royalties can be used to disadvantage competing vendors) and require each contributor to grant a royalty free patent grant for use in connection with that standard in perpetuity for any patents it holds in relation to that standard (because whatever the standards body says, the owner of the patent can still sue for patent infringement and obtain an injunction to prevent use of the patent by whoever they choose, and these patents don't need to be revealed).
As to whether Microsoft is being helpful, if Microsoft really wants to be helpful, it should allow a royalty free patent grant of any patents it holds in connection with the standard, and with future improvements to the standard whether made by Microsoft or others.
It is foolish to trust any company not to abuse control over "standards" they control. Why shouldn't they? After all it is so easy to do and they are in business to make money after all. Hell, if I controlled a standard, I would do it. However in the case of Microsoft, you are dealing with a felon convicted in three continents, and an unrepentant serial offender who is still unabashedly at it - it is unwise to the extreme. Just take a look at what they have been doing just a few months ago in relation to PC media players and licensing their "standards" to competitors.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39233873,00.htm
http://news.com.com/Critics+Microsoft+server+license+snubs+open+source/2100-7344_3-5555078.html
lol
