Just refuse to buy anything from GE and make sure you tell everyone why. Sony lost me as a customer when they tried to install a rootkit on my computer. Now that I know about this sort of thing happening at GE I can cross them off my list of potential suppliers too (not a big deal of course because GE don't sell much, perhaps nothing at all, here in Norway).
I will throw my hat in with you, I have never, ever, ever bought a Sony product after that incident. Had you or I done the same thing (hacking and exploiting that many computers) we would probably just be seeing the light of day now from our stint in prison. They got what amounted to a slap on the wrist and no one was criminally prosecuted. Therefore I will never purchase another of their products so long as I live.
As far as the main point of the thread, honestly, the older I get, the more of a Luddite I become when it comes to home electronics and appliances. I purchased and restored an older model Viking range due to it being mostly straight electronics, mechanics and pneumatic. I was able to rebuild the whole thing in 2 days. Anymore the appliance repair guys don't want to deal with repairs, unless the appliance is throwing a code and all they have to do is replace a logic board. Usually they just come out and tell you to buy a new one from them. So I have gotten to the point where, I just want simple stuff that I can repair myself. I have a commercial refrigerator and a commercial stand up freezer for this reason, they are built with repair in mind and generally use stock interchangeable parts that are simple and durable. If a person really wants to opt out of this appliance DRM game, buy used commercial equipment or boutique semi-pro home appliances. They really are better quality and most are built to be repaired and last a lifetime.
So sony lost 2 customers. And won the recent console generation.
If you play games are you now boycotting pubg (battleye), riot (valorant denuvo), Bethesda (doom denuvo), blizzard (warden), or many many other rootkit anticheats/antipiracy?
These anticheat systems are not root kits, they do not attempt to conceal their presence from you nor attempt to prevent their removal.
Are they potential security and stability headaches? Yes, as with anything you load into your OS kernel. But rootkits they are not.
Valorant’s Vanguard sucks because the thing insists on running 24/7 and requires a reboot to disable or re-enable. During operation it causes a whole host of issues from blocking programs to causing BSODs - but it sits there in plain sight.
Denuvo anti-cheat’s major issue is for whatever godforsaken reason they decided to bypass ntdll to make some syscalls breaking WINE. Presumably they did this because ntdll can be hooked like anything else, but this speaks of poor design more than anything as the kernel-mode driver should be more than capable of detecting this.
Battleye is...fine. As is Easy Anti-Cheat.
Blizzard’s warden has been a privacy mess over the years with it scanning window titles and reporting them back. But AFAIK it does all of its work usermode.
I’m not a huge fan of the level of access modern anticheat packages have on my system - but with the widely open platform that is PC gaming it’s no surprise that gamers and developers alike want cheaters to be dealt with. Valorant can kiss my ass right now though, at least everything else has the decency to only run when I’m playing a game.
The point is not that I am hurting Sony with my protest of their actions. The point is I am not compromising my values on what I think is right and wrong.
The difference between them and anti-cheats in games are that they installed it without your permission, Sony took existing open source tools (violating the GPL in the process), that while legitimate where often used by black hats to invade and exploit systems and made it into a tool to spy on users, placing a Sony audio cd into your computer would put a rootkit onto your computer. It evaded detention and resisted removal, it would report to them any suspicious activity that they deemed piracy, which they would then turn over to the RIAA to sue you. Their root kit did not protect the single album you put into your computer it spied on all your activity to report back any activity Sony deemed suspicious and again once it was there, you where spied on until you reformatted you drive and installed a clean OS. It was by every definition an intrusion virus and a rootkit.
Luckily for me I don't need to consider those things because I don't play games.
But if what you are hinting at is that one should be consistent and refrain from buying not just Sony products but also any others that perform similar stunts then yes I do try to be consistent. However I'm not about to do myself serious harm in the process precisely because I know that I am just one customer out of millions. So I put up with Microsoft because I need Visual Studio for work, I put up with Android because there really is no other alternative ecosystem that supports the applications that I need in the society in which I live.
I rationalize my way out of the problem by buying less of everything on the grounds that I am then simply less likely to have to make such a decision
And they brought their unwelcome tactics into that industry as well. Sony lost me as customer with the PS3 console. The removal of the Other OS feature greatly impacted me. After that I boycott them for 10 years. That time had since passed and I still avoid them whenever possible. They completely lost my trust.
