I haven't bought a single Sony product since the rootkit fiasco, but I've never been able to tell them this directly. I don't buy products with DRM in them. I just don't. I'm not going to be appearing in the balance sheet, however, and won't appear in the calculus of lost growth for an MBA.
The only time I think boycotts do work is when they cause a direct negative action to a company's bottom line that is sufficiently obvious that an accountant can see it. Long, slow protests -- such as exist against Nestlé for example -- are worthy but likely for the birds.
However, when an unauthorized or unofficial button is used as a replacement for repair, the phone will permanently brick itself. No warning is given that the fingerprint scanner's trustworthiness can not be verified, no ability to just use the phone with the fingerprint scanner disabled. Just straight to a permanent bricking.
You don’t want phones to work if someone swaps out that specific piece of hardware without your knowledge. Bricking the phone forever makes it harder for people to find back doors around that security feature as they would risk large numbers of expensive phones. Presumably people developing replacement fingerprint readers would notice the issue before most customers where harmed. Further, anyone actually harmed would have gotten hardware from an untrustworthy source.
They reversed course after a backlash, but I can see an argument for them standing their ground on this one.
What I don't want is this: someone steals my phone and then replaces the fingerprint sensor and has access to everything, including the ability to reset and resell the phone.
I think the problem lies in this point:
>No warning is given ... Just straight to a permanent bricking.
There should have been a warning, at least, but there was none.
If a compromised scanner fails to authenticate, then the security chip can just ignore the scanner. Not much it can do if its only avenue of communication is cut off. A warning message telling users to not touch their compromised fingerprint scanner would have been sufficient.
Circa 2010-15, the iphone home button was having more and more problem: https://osxdaily.com/2011/12/22/iphone-home-button-not-worki...
For a while, half the users were just using a software button as a workaround: https://osxdaily.com/2012/07/02/broken-iphone-home-button-as...
It was funny to see everyone with a very expensive phone just moving around this fake button everywhere on their screen because their physical button was not working.
But then people stopped finding it funny.
Because Apple said it was a hardware problem, and said the fix was to buy the next iphone generation.
However, a few weeks later, jailbreak iphone received a patch from the community fixing the home button problem, showing not only that it was a software issue that was easy to fix, but Apple just conned their entire customer base.
They sold atleast one less PS3. I caved and let my kid get a 4 and 5 when they came out. But he's gotta keep them at his mother's house.
Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving.
On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past because now they are good guys. So they can get away with corruption, sabotage, monopoly abuse, insulting the competition, stealing, lying, patent trolling, etc. No problem. Bill Gates is a wonderful person and a great philanthropist nowadays.
The corporations and billionaires have found the recipe to get away with everything. The humans were always hackable.