Why should a vendor be able to stop you from using a thing you bought because it looks like one of theirs? No support, sure. Disavow the item, sure. Post warnings on the device as an inbuilt part of the system, sure. But destroy your item? No.
If someone is fraudulently selling cars badged as Fords, Ford itself should not be able to repossess those vehicles. And if Ford thinks that you have stolen their car, they themselves should still not be the ones who repossess it - that's what the police are for. Vigilantism is a bad thing and has all kinds of unexpected failure modes.
Actually, there's a very analogous thing for cars - LoJack. Is that wrong too?
It happens with copy protection on software. I've heard of games that become impossible to win if they detect they're pirated. Others that just fail entirely. Is that not OK either?
It wouldn't be OK if the developers intentionally affected copies that most users would explicitly believe were not counterfeit (for example, if all Steam copies did this because the game developer had an exclusive agreement with EA/Origin).
The users of the counterfeit phones had no way of knowing they were counterfeit. They were advertised as brand new and came in a shrinkwrapped box.
Crypto devices should brick themselves if they discover they've been tampered with.
It's a clear case of seller fraud and if you use a good marketplace (ie not the one starting with E) you can get a refund through the platform. And maybe get information to use in suing the seller.
So if I scramble the firmware on your phone and brick it, you don't consider that damaged?
> LoJack
... works in tandem with police, hardly 'very analagous'.
> It happens with copy protection on software.
The user should have been warned that applying the update would brick the detected non-original phone. It shouldn't have just silently fucked the user over. It's bad ethics and also bad PR. Fucking over a user acting in good faith is poor form ethically.
A closer analogy - and still not exactly, since the owner would still have actually lost the car - would be if the police came and burned it down just so that you couldn't use it.
They're enforcing their copyright. Why not? The police can also confiscate computers with pirated software on them. They even do that sometimes. It doesn't return the money to the IP owners but it's still a way to deter theft.
It sounds like a good idea to me. Even if it doesn't recover their lost sales, it should prevent future black market copies since customers will know to avoid unofficial sellers.
It'd be like if you bought a brand new car from a dealership, then two weeks later the police came to your house, told you it was stolen and burnt it down.