How does taking advantage of standards-compliant layouts requiring breaking the past?

I mean, if they're truly standards-compliant layouts, then they shouldn't be doing anything that requires that old stuff, and therefore they shouldn't be affected whether that stuff stays in or not. Or maybe I'm missing something.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds like it's headed in the right direction, but to me, at least, it's more about forcing crappy older sites to update their stuff than anything else.