There is an enormous power imbalance between Sony and the customer which will lead to abuse.

They will filibuster and or beaurocrat-ize away any will to pursue lawsuits, or they will offer token trivial compensation (which doesn’t nearly reflect the actual lost income)

Your “meh” apathy is what leads to the abuse of power by the larger parties

I just don't see the need for a law which turns a civil issue into a criminal one. There are already existing frameworks for this - contracts. If someone isn't comfortable with the terms, then they don't use Sony products.

If your argument is that Sony is too big and has a monopoly on projectors - then antitrust laws exist.

As a society, we've already concluded that contracts are insufficient to cover a huge class of situations (minimum wages, banning non-competes, etc.). Why would you think they're sufficient to handle this one?

We already have simple systems that handle "you broke my stuff" fairly well - why would we want to lean on something as slow and complex as antitrust laws to resolve this? The Epic vs Google lawsuit started in 2020. 3 years is a long time to wait to collect damages for broken projectors.

> Why would you think they're sufficient to handle this one?

It's a business transaction where contracts are the norm. Sony may not be very flexible on terms, but no one is forced to buy their projectors and agree to the terms.

> why would we want to lean on something as slow and complex as antitrust laws

We would if consumers had no other choice but to buy Sony projectors only - that doesn't seem to be the case, though.

> but no one is forced to buy their projectors and agree to the terms

I don’t know how much choice movie theaters have. As I understand it, these projectors read directly from a hard drive, and are heavily regulated to avoid piracy. According to the Wikipedia article [1] there are only 4 approved manufacturers, and until very recently Sony had the only 4k model.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema (see the projectors for digits cinema section)

I think you are confused about how laws work. A law can cover sales and transactions without any criminal penalties. It can layout the ground for civil actions, to be taken by either government entities or the effected parties themselves.

Just because a law is created doesn't mean a new crime with criminal penalties is created.

You're right, there doesn't have to be criminal penalties. Codifying compensation requirements for buggy software seems like it would need to be very broad and effectively a useless law, though.

Not really, just a simple law that said software vendor are liable for actual loss caused by their products would have a huge impact.

Courts are our mechanism for sorting out the details, not legislation.

I’m sure Sony is sensitive to the PR hit from movie theaters telling their customers that the reason they can’t watch a movie is precisely due to a Sony software update. Next time the consumer is buying a Sony product they’ll think twice about its software reliability.

I argue Sony doesn’t care as this isn’t the first time they’ve shafted customers (see below), and it sure as heck won’t be the last.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...

Thanks for sharing that, my trust is Sony’s software is now lower than before.