1. DivX works.
2. Practically everyone HAS DivX, and it's easy to get and free for those who don't.
3. Lots of things support DivX- LightWave, for one, lets you convert movies straignt to it.
4. All these 4 billion other types of encoding out here either suck, cost money, or I've never heard of them. And if I've never heard of it, chances are fair half the people here have never heard about it. If they've never heard about it, you're making people get some random encoder nobody's heard of, which is a pain in the ass, just because you happen to have some encoder from Bob knows where and don't want to use on that's actually possible to get. Let's not make it complicated.
5. If DivX is illegal, there are sure as hell enough legitimate DivX codecs and players out there right now that it can be considered legal. If everyone (literally everyone) in a town goes to hang out on one street, and there's a "No Loitering" sign back there somewhere nobody sees, who the **** is going to care?
6. We need to agree on a bloody encoder, or exactly **** will get done until the second or third time Hell freezes over and Satan has to make woolen sweaters to keep all the flying pigs warm. So let's call it DivX. It's the only one nobody's had a huge problem with so far. If someone out there wants to pussyfoot around about something that MIGHT have been illegal at some point but is completely unenforced and accepted as legitimate univerally, that's their personal problem, and they should never have gotten online in the first place. They should be off making sure nobody ever jay-walks.