While it might be naive to think such, I believe google might just go and establish deals and contracts to ensure the open nature of the codec. After all, isn't the point to have adoption++? If you have to pay royalties to surf the internet or even use specific tools, people will quickly ditch the technology. Nobody wants to pay for something that's already free.

In my opinion (and I think RMS, among many other FOSS advocates would agree), if companies still sold their works as they do, but included the source code to users (the basis of "Free as in Freedom") - that would be enough to liberate users from the current strong-hold that's on them. Really, I don't think it's much to ask. The company still makes money (laymen are unlikely going to go out, download the source code and compile it...), and the community benefits. Of course, I should point out this is a pipe-dream, unlikely to come to pass. Even if we did live in a perfectly co-operative world, I doubt people would truly have trust in the good nature of humanity.

I think there might be some changelog analysis going on too. If you see "Huge exploit xyz fixed in this patch", you're more likely to use the new, untested version just because a known exploit is closed. With security software, they're always usually fixing, improving, and generally securing their software.

I personally keep pretty up-to-date, and I can understand that a government agency would want to be completely on top of things.

"It's safer"

Oh, and I forgot. Generally here, we consider actual children involved in CP. However, there have been cases where mangas and such media have been confiscated and the seller/owner charged. Depends what part of the country you're in.

I clearly state the fact they're criminals, and I don't agree with the crimes. However, we do need to consider all the angles, else we're not going to see any motives, reasons, etc. Stealing passwords is what we'd expect, but watching criminals catching other criminals - almost humorous.
On a somewhat unrelated note, terror watch lists are a nice example of our governments invading our privacy. It almost seems like if they have one arbitrary piece of "information", they list you. I can only hope that the residents of countries employing this tactic can check if they're listed.

Not to advocate the devil, but a few years ago, a local radio jockey was arrested when computer repair people found child porn on his laptop when he sent it in for work. I'm not sure if it was a blatant act of intrusion or if he was a complete idiot and left it out in the open, but it does show that sometimes it can do good. On that note, all people who meddle in the privacy of others deserve harsh punishment. Stealing passwords is in the realm of computer criminals, and shows what these people are: criminals. Don't trust the repair men... unless you already nuked the system.

Anybody who pays attention to pirates is wasting valuable time and money implementing DRM in my opinion. DRM is a bad idea for everything as we've seen over the years. It doesn't work for music, it doesn't work for movies, and it sure as hell won't work for games.