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Comment by gaganyaan | Hacker News Reader

> I get why as a purchaser of things I would want to <...>

That's actually all you need to say. Anything else is pro-corporate bullshit that you've been spoonfed until you regurgitate it.

The rebuttal to the rest of your comment is "just try and buy a TV that isn't actively hostile to the user". But that's a side conversation, the fundamental reality is that companies are legal fiction that don't have rights. They are allowed certain privileges we grant them, and we should not grant them the ability to screw over people that don't understand what the term firmware means.

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I’d appreciate it if you’d not speculate as to my state of mind.

I as a purchaser want all kinds of things; this doesn’t mean that I want the government to mandate that companies give them to me. In part that’s because the people who run and work at businesses also have free agency, and in part it’s because I don’t believe that government interference in commerce is a viable approach to getting what I want in the long term.

People who don't know what firmware is don't care about this. Even people who do don't care. I showed this to my brother who is both a switch owner and works in tech. He didn't care. If the device works and lets them play pokemon they're content. Depressing but it's the truth.

I don't see what corporate personhood has to do with that the parent comment. They are asking if government restrictions on how Nintendo makes their product 'tamperproof' are desirable. We would have to answer the same question even if we removed 'the legal fiction of corporation' and only allowed partnerships and sole traders.

You can, they are just a lot more expensive. The hostile features are a revenue stream and subsidize the cost of the product. Apparently a lot of users are okay with that.

No, most users don't know. The frog was so well boiled it didn't even notice the water getting warm. The problem is that now things are what they are, changing them back is a behemoth effort without any motivation for those who could make it happen.

If part of your premise is that the majority of users has been tricked, you may want to consider the possibility that they just have different priorities than you.

You are oversimplifying things. It sort of overlaps some of the vaccine requirement arguments or perhaps laws that require you lock up your guns. Not updating devices that are connected to the net can and does lead to vulnerabilities that allow huge botnets to be created and deployed against anyone else on the network.

I say do what you want with your equipment if it isn't connected to the web. But if it is, you need to have some responsibility for it being used to harm others.

> companies are legal fiction that don't have rights.

Companies are quite literally legal persons and have the same rights as any natural-born citizen. It’d be a violation of a natural person’s rights if you forbade them from exercising those rights with others, companies only simplify the legal side of asset ownership and taxes.

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