tl;dr DRM, Sony Rootkit debacle, Vegas Video (and the other audio ap that they purchased from Sonic Forge) activation scheme. Trust.
1. The CD they produced with a rootkit that I had write a script to facilitate it's removal from several hundred PCs on a network with unique government contractual security requirements.
2. My Sony 1080p HD TV that I have to unplug the HDMI cable any time I want to watch streaming video on my Sony Blu-Ray player.
3. Vegas Video, which was far too expensive of a piece of software to (A) treat me like a criminal for having made the mistake of actually paying for it and (B) spending two weeks pleading my case after I upgraded my PC for the third time and the software insisted that I pay for it again.
As a rule, I avoid products who's DRM schemes I am forced to use. You can't always avoid it, but my PDF collection is unencrypted and, though I assume that Sony isn't going to suddenly add DRM to those files, I can only go by their history and the fact that there's not really any evidence that they've learned their lesson, only that they got caught and like most companies, prefer to avoid the negative press. Even Microsoft has toned down the implementation of their activation schemes. Remember when a PC would deactivate resulting in a 3 hour usage limit and the disabling of Aero? I have a PC that hasn't been able to talk to the licensing server for a year and all I see is a subtle Genuine Windows message in the lower right hand corner, a nag when I start Office and a message in the title bar. It's a little annoying since these are legal enterprise licenses on a tablet that I just haven't used VPN on in a very long time, but the software still works properly.
This kind of product requires me to grant Sony a certain amount of trust. Sony flushed trust down the toilet with Vegas Video and two Sony products failing to negotiate a proper HDCP handshake without physically unplugging cables. That would have been enough, but I don't even have a metaphor to describe what they did when they chose to take a medium with no DRM scheme and hack a user's PC into inserting one much like ransomware does with people's word docs.
I'd have no room to complain if I plugged that device in and it b0rked my PDF collection because based on history, what else should I expect?
1. The CD they produced with a rootkit that I had write a script to facilitate it's removal from several hundred PCs on a network with unique government contractual security requirements.
2. My Sony 1080p HD TV that I have to unplug the HDMI cable any time I want to watch streaming video on my Sony Blu-Ray player.
3. Vegas Video, which was far too expensive of a piece of software to (A) treat me like a criminal for having made the mistake of actually paying for it and (B) spending two weeks pleading my case after I upgraded my PC for the third time and the software insisted that I pay for it again.
As a rule, I avoid products who's DRM schemes I am forced to use. You can't always avoid it, but my PDF collection is unencrypted and, though I assume that Sony isn't going to suddenly add DRM to those files, I can only go by their history and the fact that there's not really any evidence that they've learned their lesson, only that they got caught and like most companies, prefer to avoid the negative press. Even Microsoft has toned down the implementation of their activation schemes. Remember when a PC would deactivate resulting in a 3 hour usage limit and the disabling of Aero? I have a PC that hasn't been able to talk to the licensing server for a year and all I see is a subtle Genuine Windows message in the lower right hand corner, a nag when I start Office and a message in the title bar. It's a little annoying since these are legal enterprise licenses on a tablet that I just haven't used VPN on in a very long time, but the software still works properly.
This kind of product requires me to grant Sony a certain amount of trust. Sony flushed trust down the toilet with Vegas Video and two Sony products failing to negotiate a proper HDCP handshake without physically unplugging cables. That would have been enough, but I don't even have a metaphor to describe what they did when they chose to take a medium with no DRM scheme and hack a user's PC into inserting one much like ransomware does with people's word docs.
I'd have no room to complain if I plugged that device in and it b0rked my PDF collection because based on history, what else should I expect?
*EDIT: Grammar