The Cato Institute has a paper that covers the 'loser pays' idea among other things. The paper mentions how to guard against certain problems with a 'loser pays' systems. For example, insurance could be available to cover certain costs incurred in a case.
It is likely that many users will be very inexperienced. Making things slightly more difficult for advanced users (i.e. having administrators explicitly enable services) could be better than relying on the expertise of users (i.e. they have to explicitly disable a number of unwanted services.) Perhaps an update could have different install options for users with different levels of expertise.
It is possible to give a false sense of security if the security effects are very blatant while at the same time they mean little. Users might do something careless. Imagine a user who constantly gets alerts about "suspicious activity" on their system and decides to ignore them out of irritation...
The PNG format FAQ addresses the question of why the PNG format did not incorporate animation. They claim that support for animation would have overloaded the one format. Also, they claim that there would have been a problem of MIME types; would the type for the PNG format be video/png or image/png specifically? (The MIME type for Flash animation is application/x-shockwave-flash.) For the GIF format, it appears that the MIME type is image/gif. It could be said that it should be clear as to whether a file is for a still image or animation.
Though the Unisys patents concerning the GIF format have expired, there is still the IBM patent and there might be other patents elsewhere. The Free Software Foundation still has no GIF images on their site as of June 21, 2004 and they seem to consider the IBM patent (which expires on August 11, 2006) to be an issue. Also, the FSF says that they have only checked for patents in the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union as of June 21, 2004.
The GIF format will likely be remembered as a format which unexpectedly became encumbered to the inconvenience of many.
Back in the 1980s, there was an incident on the Apple Macintosh platform with an infected CD-ROM. The disc was the "QLTech MEGA ROM" disc (Volume 1, October 1988.) The producer of the disc, Quantum Leap Technologies Inc., made a replacement disc to replace the infected one. More details here.
Viruses on mass-produced CD-ROMs are extremely rare. Homemade data CDs made on a CD burner are a different matter.
There likely are teenagers who know about security issues, etc. However, there are also likely teenagers who know how to use technology but who are not aware of related issues that come up. They may assume that other issues do not matter because they feel very capable. Some (not all) individuals take a while to become fully mature.
Some years ago, a teenager got into legal difficulty over a domain name. He created a Web site when he was 10 years old, and he later set up the site at its own domain. However, the domain name for his site turned out to conflict with a trademark held by a large company. The significant issue is not that there was a domain name/trademark conflict. Of more significance is the fact that an individual was very capable with technology yet not legally an adult, and he got into a situation that normally would not be expected of young people. This sort of thing does not happen often but it is worth remembering.
On the Apple Macintosh platform, there is a shareware utility called "Addiction Manager." It allows a user to restrict the launch of specific applications (presumably by themself) to certain days and times. Obviously, this application can be defeated with the proper utility software.
It is not clear how effective this sort of "anti-slacking" software would be...
Consider various standards that incorporate secure hash functions. Those standards might persist for a while even if a secure hash function is broken. It might be tempting to retain support for such standards for the sake of backwards compatibility. Someone might not realize that such a standard has become insecure. It is easy to not get around to updating software.
The Linux OS kernel is distributed under the GNU GPL (GNU General Public License.) As of now, there is no proof that the license is not valid. Basically, the GPL is a set of conditions under which the user of a work can exercise the rights that are normally granted only to the copyright holder. There might be an issue as to whether the user could acceptably understand the license, but this might not be an issue. It would not be a good idea to assume right now that the license is not valid.
As of now, there is no proof that the Linux software incorporates any proprietary code. However, it is not OK for a company to impose their own restrictions on how people use GPL-covered Linux code. See this article. This code cannot be combined with any proprietary code. A company can produce proprietary code, but they cannot authorize it to be combined with the Linux code unless the code to be added is GPLed. Requiring people to obtain a license from the company to use the Linux software (even if the Linux software came from the company) is not a good thing. It is possible (though not certain) that using an unauthorized proprietary version or derivative of the Linux software could lead to copyright violation liability. In this case, the violated copyrights would be those of individuals and companies who contributed code under the GPL. This should not be taken as discouragement from using the Linux software-only obviously illegal i.e. restrictively sublicensed copies should be avoided.
Accepting a license could also encourage behavior that is not necessarily justified.
The LPF has mentioned a cartoon about the U.S. Patent Office. The cartoon shows a military aircraft carrying a black monolith (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey) towards the USPTO building. The "sorely needed" delivery is being done by "two geeks."
In the case of mission-critical or life-critical equipment, there are several things that should be done regarding the control software. For one thing, simplifying the software would be very useful and could reduce the number of possibilities where something could go wrong. Visual attractiveness should not necessarily be one of the highest priorities like it often is with regular software. Another thing would be to emphasize making the software secure to begin with to reduce problems and faults later on. Of course, this might mean that the release of the software might be delayed, but unexpected delays later on would be reduced. It is possible that open-source or free (free as in freedom) software might not be a bad idea. What would be important would be to review it for security issues and to obtain information about the changes and contributions in the past, to avoid a situation where proprietary copyrighted code was accidentally or deliberately introduced. It should not be necessary for the software to be secret in order for it to be secure (no "security through obscurity".) Another important aspect of open source or free software is the position of not being tied to a specific vendor who might change their practices in the future. If the equipment manufacturer can adjust the software to their precise circumstances, that is important.
With regard to security patches, security expert Bruce Schneier recommends monitoring something such as a network as an alternative to relying on security patches. Of course, there might be the issue of how to respond if something suspicious happens. Combined with measures such as simplifying the software, this might be better than repeatedly getting into difficulty over whether to apply a security patch.
Some people are concerned about e-voting because of security and/or reliability issues. And rightly so. If other people are concerned because fear of e-voting will reduce voter turnout, that concern is also valid. People will not want to use an unreliable voting system. Also, the total voter turnout is important for voting and democracy to work. This might well indicate that the issues concerning e-voting should be taken seriously. However, others might argue from this that few people are actually concerned about the process itself and that most concern is about others refusing to participate because of their fears. Hopefully, concerned voters will use alternative voting methods such as absentee ballots or they will find out about measures such as voter-verifiable paper trails.
Why are many individuals not concerned about security and reliability problems with e-voting? There are several possible reasons:
E-voting is impressive, like technology is often impressive. This could be particularly true for older people.
People have had bad experiences with paper ballots and e-voting will supposedly solve this problem.
Assumptions that "we trust technology for air-traffic control, etc." (see this response) or "we trust computers for billion-dollar transactions" (see this response) and so "e-voting should be easily secure". Securing an existing computer system, even something like a home PC, can be quite difficult.
Voting should be effortless, and even a paper receipt adds effort. This is similar to "instant gratification."
Voting should be accessible, and a paper ballot would interfere with that. Hopefully, voting can be made reliable and accessible (see this response.)
It was a good thing that the Katie.com story was renamed. However, it would have been much better if the naming conflict had been avoided in the first place. It would have been better for Penguin (the publisher) to register a domain name and then name the story for that domain. If at all possible, Katie Tarbox and those related in terms of her story should make an effort to de-emphasize the use of the "Katie.com" name.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has information about providing bogus information for the purprose of protecting privacy. This means providing information of a legitimate form but which will not conflict with any existing personal information i.e. an address used by someone else. For Social Security numbers, they recommend 078-05-1120, which was used on sample Social Security cards in the past. The government knows this number is bogus. There are also Social Security numbers in the range 987-65-4320 to 987-65-4329. For phone numbers, it is recommended to use the number (202) 224-3121 which is for the Congressional switchboard. For addresses, they recommend using the address of a local park or something like that. If any location will do, they suggest the address 3500 S. Wacker, Chicago IL 60616 which is for a park in Chicago.
When a Web site address does appear in a movie, etc. the production company should register the domain ahead of time to ensure it is not already in use.
It sounds like a very unfortunate situation. In particular, the Register article says that Penguin (the book publisher) knew that katie.com was registered by someone else. In this case, they likely should have given the book a different name. Perhaps they could have registered a new domain and set up a Web site related to the book. Basically, it was probably not a good idea to name the book for a Web domain that they had not registered. It might even be a good idea for the book to be rereleased with a new name (plus an explanation.) For Katie T, it would not hurt to try and de-emphasize if possible the use of the "Katie.com" name for TV shows, etc. related to her story. Does Penguin (the publisher) have any right to take the domain from Katie Jones? This would probably be true only if katie.com was a trademark of theirs. There have been cases where someone registers a domain without realizing that it is a trademark. In this case it sounds like Katie Jones came along first. However, it is a different situation where someone registers a domain and then later someone else tries to establish the name of the domain as a trademark. There is a very good chance that Katie Jones (not Katie T) is entitled to the katie.com domain and the name of the katie.com story should ideally be changed (although that could be difficult.)
The advice about not looking at software patents is smarter than one might think. For example, see this article. It was written by an attorney who has worked with patents, and it talks about the idea of not looking among other things. The article says that parties are often advised by lawyers not to look at patents for the reason of willful infringement. Also, it is said this cautionary advice defeats the supposed advantage of the patent system increasing public knowledge.
If the Linux software infringes on patents, it might not be to blame in a sense. The situation with software patents should be to blame. Given the supposed thousands and thousands of software patents in existence, it is close to impossible to avoid violating every single last software patent in existence. An individual or company could easily use or distribute infringing software without ever realizing it. Who knows if the web browser being used to view this comment infringes on some obscure software patent? Patent searches are not necessarily a solution. With software authoring and production, individuals and small groups play a significant role and patents are especially difficult for them to consider.
Proprietary software should not be considered immune from patent problems. A difference is that patent violations with proprietary software might be less obvious, unless the software did something like creating a compressed GIF image file for example. That does not mean that patent infringements would not exist, and they could become known later on. It would be interesting if a party disassembled a proprietary software package in violation of the EULA and found patent violations as a result.
Virtually all electronics contain metal. Placing metal objects in a microwave oven can pose a fire hazard and can damage the oven. Google Answers has a discussion on the presence of metal racks in some microwave ovens.
As of June 21, 2004 (when the page was updated) the Free Software Foundation seems to consider the GIF format to be patent-encumbered. They say that the IBM patent would be an issue even if the Unisys patent was not an issue. Also, it is said that the IBM patent in the USA will expire on August 11, 2006. The FSF has said that they have not been able to search every patent database for every country (they have searched in the USA, Japan, Canada, and the European Union so far.) It is possible that there are additional patents that have not been found yet.
Interestingly, the FSF says that the patents for Unisys and IBM only covered LZW compression and not LZW decompression.
The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) did indeed restore US copyrights to a number of foreign works that had become public domain in the USA. Copyright owners who were planning to enforce a restored copyright were supposed to notify any reliance parties. A "reliance party" was a party who had assumed that a URAA-covered work was public domain and who had begun making use of the work prior to the URAA enactment. A copyright holder could tell the Copyright Office that they planned to enforce the copyright. The Office published lists of URAA-covered works with enforced copyrights. When a reliance party found out about a work's URAA copyright enforcement, they had a 12-month period to prepare and to cease making copies of the work, etc. After the 12-month period, the reliance party was required to honor the restored copyright. If a reliance party had produced a derivative work of a URAA-covered work prior to the URAA enactment, they could keep using the derivative work in exchange for paying compensation to the copyright owner. More information on the URAA can be found here (PDF format file.)
The URAA did try to take into account that parties might have started exploiting URAA-covered works prior to the URAA enactment. However, it was still probably a lousy experience if a party was planning to exploit a URAA-covered work on an extended basis or was not counting on paying anything for a derivative work. Hopefully there were no young individuals or hobbyists who were hit by the URAA.
In this case, it appears that it is indeed possible to restore copyright (and possibly patent) protection to a public-domain work. However, exploitation of the work prior to the enactment of the restored protection would not be punishable.
Widespread adoption of the PNG standard would be a good thing. The significance of the GIF saga is not that the GIF format was encumbered. The significance is that the GIF format was intended to be open but was unexpectedly found to be encumbered (it was too late to eliminate the encumbered technique because of backwards compatability.) It is likely that the GIF format will always be remembered for these happenings.
The PNG format has more than just lossless compression. It has a format designed to thoroughly check the file integrity, among other things. The PNG standard is designed to allow enhancements to the format without having different format versions; it would be interesting to see how that works out. Even the pronounciation ("ping") was standardized.
There is such a thing as a "submarine" patent. It happens when a party files for a patent on something that does not really exist at the time. The issuing of the patent is delayed (perhaps deliberately by the party obtaining the patent) until someone else produces or implements the covered invention. At that time the patent is finally issued. In the past, the term of a patent started once the patent was issued (not when it was filed) but now the term of a patent is from the filing date. Also, it is said that patent applications have to be published within 18 months of the filing. This makes submarine patents much less common than they once were, but they still likely exist.
It is well known that an individual did file a lawsuit after being burned by hot coffee. However, this might not be the best example of a weird lawsuit. According to one description, the coffee was very hot and the individual sustained serious injuries. Also, the temperature of the coffee was not lowered despite there being 700 burn incidents in 10 years. A commentary can be found here.
This is not to imply that all cases are legitimate, but that case might not be the best example.
Freedom concerning software or source code and access to source code should not be confused. Allowing inspection of source code by those outside could be beneficial. However, there would be issues such as whether being able to see only parts of the source would be sufficient or whether the source provided for inspection was secretly altered (would the inspectors be able to actually try out the code personally? What exactly would they be allowed to do with the code?) Hopefully this would not lead to a false sense of security. One problem is that some individuals might feel bitter because only a few individuals outside the company received the privilege of inspecting the source code.
The Open Source Initiative company has talked about how problems could arise from a source-access program such as "Shared Source." Namely, these problems would be copyright and trade secret issues if developers viewed the proprietary source code and then produced competing software. It might be necessary to carefully keep track of who has accessed the provided source. They also mention that those inspecting the source code could end up serving as "free labor" for the company that produced the code.
For freedom, free software (free as in free speech) or open source software (under the OSI definition) would be a much better choice.
Slashdot Mirror
The Cato Institute has a paper that covers the 'loser pays' idea among other things. The paper mentions how to guard against certain problems with a 'loser pays' systems. For example, insurance could be available to cover certain costs incurred in a case.
The PNG format FAQ addresses the question of why the PNG format did not incorporate animation. They claim that support for animation would have overloaded the one format. Also, they claim that there would have been a problem of MIME types; would the type for the PNG format be video/png or image/png specifically? (The MIME type for Flash animation is application/x-shockwave-flash.) For the GIF format, it appears that the MIME type is image/gif. It could be said that it should be clear as to whether a file is for a still image or animation.
Though the Unisys patents concerning the GIF format have expired, there is still the IBM patent and there might be other patents elsewhere. The Free Software Foundation still has no GIF images on their site as of June 21, 2004 and they seem to consider the IBM patent (which expires on August 11, 2006) to be an issue. Also, the FSF says that they have only checked for patents in the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union as of June 21, 2004.
The GIF format will likely be remembered as a format which unexpectedly became encumbered to the inconvenience of many.
Back in the 1980s, there was an incident on the Apple Macintosh platform with an infected CD-ROM. The disc was the "QLTech MEGA ROM" disc (Volume 1, October 1988.) The producer of the disc, Quantum Leap Technologies Inc., made a replacement disc to replace the infected one. More details here.
Viruses on mass-produced CD-ROMs are extremely rare. Homemade data CDs made on a CD burner are a different matter.
There likely are teenagers who know about security issues, etc. However, there are also likely teenagers who know how to use technology but who are not aware of related issues that come up. They may assume that other issues do not matter because they feel very capable. Some (not all) individuals take a while to become fully mature.
Some years ago, a teenager got into legal difficulty over a domain name. He created a Web site when he was 10 years old, and he later set up the site at its own domain. However, the domain name for his site turned out to conflict with a trademark held by a large company. The significant issue is not that there was a domain name/trademark conflict. Of more significance is the fact that an individual was very capable with technology yet not legally an adult, and he got into a situation that normally would not be expected of young people. This sort of thing does not happen often but it is worth remembering.
On the Apple Macintosh platform, there is a shareware utility called "Addiction Manager." It allows a user to restrict the launch of specific applications (presumably by themself) to certain days and times. Obviously, this application can be defeated with the proper utility software.
It is not clear how effective this sort of "anti-slacking" software would be...
Consider various standards that incorporate secure hash functions. Those standards might persist for a while even if a secure hash function is broken. It might be tempting to retain support for such standards for the sake of backwards compatibility. Someone might not realize that such a standard has become insecure. It is easy to not get around to updating software.
The Linux OS kernel is distributed under the GNU GPL (GNU General Public License.) As of now, there is no proof that the license is not valid. Basically, the GPL is a set of conditions under which the user of a work can exercise the rights that are normally granted only to the copyright holder. There might be an issue as to whether the user could acceptably understand the license, but this might not be an issue. It would not be a good idea to assume right now that the license is not valid.
As of now, there is no proof that the Linux software incorporates any proprietary code. However, it is not OK for a company to impose their own restrictions on how people use GPL-covered Linux code. See this article. This code cannot be combined with any proprietary code. A company can produce proprietary code, but they cannot authorize it to be combined with the Linux code unless the code to be added is GPLed. Requiring people to obtain a license from the company to use the Linux software (even if the Linux software came from the company) is not a good thing. It is possible (though not certain) that using an unauthorized proprietary version or derivative of the Linux software could lead to copyright violation liability. In this case, the violated copyrights would be those of individuals and companies who contributed code under the GPL. This should not be taken as discouragement from using the Linux software-only obviously illegal i.e. restrictively sublicensed copies should be avoided.
Accepting a license could also encourage behavior that is not necessarily justified.
The LPF has mentioned a cartoon about the U.S. Patent Office. The cartoon shows a military aircraft carrying a black monolith (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey) towards the USPTO building. The "sorely needed" delivery is being done by "two geeks."
In the case of mission-critical or life-critical equipment, there are several things that should be done regarding the control software. For one thing, simplifying the software would be very useful and could reduce the number of possibilities where something could go wrong. Visual attractiveness should not necessarily be one of the highest priorities like it often is with regular software. Another thing would be to emphasize making the software secure to begin with to reduce problems and faults later on. Of course, this might mean that the release of the software might be delayed, but unexpected delays later on would be reduced. It is possible that open-source or free (free as in freedom) software might not be a bad idea. What would be important would be to review it for security issues and to obtain information about the changes and contributions in the past, to avoid a situation where proprietary copyrighted code was accidentally or deliberately introduced. It should not be necessary for the software to be secret in order for it to be secure (no "security through obscurity".) Another important aspect of open source or free software is the position of not being tied to a specific vendor who might change their practices in the future. If the equipment manufacturer can adjust the software to their precise circumstances, that is important.
There is a cancer clinic that uses free software, including the GNU software utilities and the Linux® OS kernel. Though it is not clear that the free software runs actual equipment, it is mentioned to show that free software has been used in serious circumstances.
With regard to security patches, security expert Bruce Schneier recommends monitoring something such as a network as an alternative to relying on security patches. Of course, there might be the issue of how to respond if something suspicious happens. Combined with measures such as simplifying the software, this might be better than repeatedly getting into difficulty over whether to apply a security patch.
Some people are concerned about e-voting because of security and/or reliability issues. And rightly so. If other people are concerned because fear of e-voting will reduce voter turnout, that concern is also valid. People will not want to use an unreliable voting system. Also, the total voter turnout is important for voting and democracy to work. This might well indicate that the issues concerning e-voting should be taken seriously. However, others might argue from this that few people are actually concerned about the process itself and that most concern is about others refusing to participate because of their fears. Hopefully, concerned voters will use alternative voting methods such as absentee ballots or they will find out about measures such as voter-verifiable paper trails.
Why are many individuals not concerned about security and reliability problems with e-voting? There are several possible reasons:
It was a good thing that the Katie.com story was renamed. However, it would have been much better if the naming conflict had been avoided in the first place. It would have been better for Penguin (the publisher) to register a domain name and then name the story for that domain. If at all possible, Katie Tarbox and those related in terms of her story should make an effort to de-emphasize the use of the "Katie.com" name.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has information about providing bogus information for the purprose of protecting privacy. This means providing information of a legitimate form but which will not conflict with any existing personal information i.e. an address used by someone else. For Social Security numbers, they recommend 078-05-1120, which was used on sample Social Security cards in the past. The government knows this number is bogus. There are also Social Security numbers in the range 987-65-4320 to 987-65-4329. For phone numbers, it is recommended to use the number (202) 224-3121 which is for the Congressional switchboard. For addresses, they recommend using the address of a local park or something like that. If any location will do, they suggest the address 3500 S. Wacker, Chicago IL 60616 which is for a park in Chicago.
When a Web site address does appear in a movie, etc. the production company should register the domain ahead of time to ensure it is not already in use.
It sounds like a very unfortunate situation. In particular, the Register article says that Penguin (the book publisher) knew that katie.com was registered by someone else. In this case, they likely should have given the book a different name. Perhaps they could have registered a new domain and set up a Web site related to the book. Basically, it was probably not a good idea to name the book for a Web domain that they had not registered. It might even be a good idea for the book to be rereleased with a new name (plus an explanation.) For Katie T, it would not hurt to try and de-emphasize if possible the use of the "Katie.com" name for TV shows, etc. related to her story. Does Penguin (the publisher) have any right to take the domain from Katie Jones? This would probably be true only if katie.com was a trademark of theirs. There have been cases where someone registers a domain without realizing that it is a trademark. In this case it sounds like Katie Jones came along first. However, it is a different situation where someone registers a domain and then later someone else tries to establish the name of the domain as a trademark. There is a very good chance that Katie Jones (not Katie T) is entitled to the katie.com domain and the name of the katie.com story should ideally be changed (although that could be difficult.)
The advice about not looking at software patents is smarter than one might think. For example, see this article. It was written by an attorney who has worked with patents, and it talks about the idea of not looking among other things. The article says that parties are often advised by lawyers not to look at patents for the reason of willful infringement. Also, it is said this cautionary advice defeats the supposed advantage of the patent system increasing public knowledge.
If the Linux software infringes on patents, it might not be to blame in a sense. The situation with software patents should be to blame. Given the supposed thousands and thousands of software patents in existence, it is close to impossible to avoid violating every single last software patent in existence. An individual or company could easily use or distribute infringing software without ever realizing it. Who knows if the web browser being used to view this comment infringes on some obscure software patent? Patent searches are not necessarily a solution. With software authoring and production, individuals and small groups play a significant role and patents are especially difficult for them to consider.
Proprietary software should not be considered immune from patent problems. A difference is that patent violations with proprietary software might be less obvious, unless the software did something like creating a compressed GIF image file for example. That does not mean that patent infringements would not exist, and they could become known later on. It would be interesting if a party disassembled a proprietary software package in violation of the EULA and found patent violations as a result.
Virtually all electronics contain metal. Placing metal objects in a microwave oven can pose a fire hazard and can damage the oven. Google Answers has a discussion on the presence of metal racks in some microwave ovens.
As of June 21, 2004 (when the page was updated) the Free Software Foundation seems to consider the GIF format to be patent-encumbered. They say that the IBM patent would be an issue even if the Unisys patent was not an issue. Also, it is said that the IBM patent in the USA will expire on August 11, 2006. The FSF has said that they have not been able to search every patent database for every country (they have searched in the USA, Japan, Canada, and the European Union so far.) It is possible that there are additional patents that have not been found yet.
Interestingly, the FSF says that the patents for Unisys and IBM only covered LZW compression and not LZW decompression.
The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) did indeed restore US copyrights to a number of foreign works that had become public domain in the USA. Copyright owners who were planning to enforce a restored copyright were supposed to notify any reliance parties. A "reliance party" was a party who had assumed that a URAA-covered work was public domain and who had begun making use of the work prior to the URAA enactment. A copyright holder could tell the Copyright Office that they planned to enforce the copyright. The Office published lists of URAA-covered works with enforced copyrights. When a reliance party found out about a work's URAA copyright enforcement, they had a 12-month period to prepare and to cease making copies of the work, etc. After the 12-month period, the reliance party was required to honor the restored copyright. If a reliance party had produced a derivative work of a URAA-covered work prior to the URAA enactment, they could keep using the derivative work in exchange for paying compensation to the copyright owner. More information on the URAA can be found here (PDF format file.)
The URAA did try to take into account that parties might have started exploiting URAA-covered works prior to the URAA enactment. However, it was still probably a lousy experience if a party was planning to exploit a URAA-covered work on an extended basis or was not counting on paying anything for a derivative work. Hopefully there were no young individuals or hobbyists who were hit by the URAA.
In this case, it appears that it is indeed possible to restore copyright (and possibly patent) protection to a public-domain work. However, exploitation of the work prior to the enactment of the restored protection would not be punishable.
Widespread adoption of the PNG standard would be a good thing. The significance of the GIF saga is not that the GIF format was encumbered. The significance is that the GIF format was intended to be open but was unexpectedly found to be encumbered (it was too late to eliminate the encumbered technique because of backwards compatability.) It is likely that the GIF format will always be remembered for these happenings.
The PNG format has more than just lossless compression. It has a format designed to thoroughly check the file integrity, among other things. The PNG standard is designed to allow enhancements to the format without having different format versions; it would be interesting to see how that works out. Even the pronounciation ("ping") was standardized.
There is such a thing as a "submarine" patent. It happens when a party files for a patent on something that does not really exist at the time. The issuing of the patent is delayed (perhaps deliberately by the party obtaining the patent) until someone else produces or implements the covered invention. At that time the patent is finally issued. In the past, the term of a patent started once the patent was issued (not when it was filed) but now the term of a patent is from the filing date. Also, it is said that patent applications have to be published within 18 months of the filing. This makes submarine patents much less common than they once were, but they still likely exist.
It is well known that an individual did file a lawsuit after being burned by hot coffee. However, this might not be the best example of a weird lawsuit. According to one description, the coffee was very hot and the individual sustained serious injuries. Also, the temperature of the coffee was not lowered despite there being 700 burn incidents in 10 years. A commentary can be found here.
This is not to imply that all cases are legitimate, but that case might not be the best example.
Freedom concerning software or source code and access to source code should not be confused. Allowing inspection of source code by those outside could be beneficial. However, there would be issues such as whether being able to see only parts of the source would be sufficient or whether the source provided for inspection was secretly altered (would the inspectors be able to actually try out the code personally? What exactly would they be allowed to do with the code?) Hopefully this would not lead to a false sense of security. One problem is that some individuals might feel bitter because only a few individuals outside the company received the privilege of inspecting the source code.
The Open Source Initiative company has talked about how problems could arise from a source-access program such as "Shared Source." Namely, these problems would be copyright and trade secret issues if developers viewed the proprietary source code and then produced competing software. It might be necessary to carefully keep track of who has accessed the provided source. They also mention that those inspecting the source code could end up serving as "free labor" for the company that produced the code.
For freedom, free software (free as in free speech) or open source software (under the OSI definition) would be a much better choice.