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Originally Posted by HarryT
In a capitalist society, isn't it the goal of every company to monopolise its market sector and discourage competition? A company's goal - in fact its legal obligation - is to make money for its shareholders, not to be "nice" to its customers! If being "nice" helps to win it business, then that may be a part of its business strategy, but one should never make the mistake of thinking that a large company exists to "make the world a better place".
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That is exactly my point. If I were a Sony shareholder, I'd be wondering about the effectiveness of their policy. You gain more revenue by having hordes of happy customers making repeat purchases than you do by driving them away with high prices and restrictive controls on the product. The knock-on effect is that if you have customers bad-mouthing you and accusing you of being greedy, it doesn't help your other product areas either.
Then there is the issue of motivation to crack the copyright protection - all it takes is a few p*ssed-off tech-savvy users with enough resources and you end up like Microsoft have with the breaking of their protected .LIT format. Once all your released catalogue gets pushed out illegally into the public domain you start to lose a lot of potential sales, so better try to avoid that problem by a more enlightened approach.
I'm advocating the kind of model that offers excellent value, wide range, good quality and flexibility - like the extremely successful "Gourmet Chinese Buffet" concept, rather than trying to sell "The Ivy" to people who can't afford to eat lunch there every day.