Ambivalent, but can you trust Sony?

[DiaAzul]

Another interesting perspective from Michael and informed perspective illustrating general trends in the photographic market. But...

...do you trust Sony?

This may sound like a rather offbeat question to pose, but something I believe impacts on the future sale of Sony equipment. I have to state up front that I have never been tempted to buy anything made by Sony, it has always appeared as marketing hype/ brand over performance. I admit that this is a personal point of view, but I have never managed to quite worked out why Sony should be perceived as a premium brand.

Another issue I have always had with Sony is their tendancy to try and corner the market by introducing proprietary standards - starting with Betamax, but more recently such items as Memory Sticks and their Atrac audio recoding standard. In the photography world we have railed against Nikon for attempting to close off RAW formats through encription - I just dread to think how much worse the situation would be if Sony was to get a foothold in the DSLR market, sufficient to influence the future course of technology.

A more recent example of Sony's disregard for their consumers is the scandal associated with their music CDs and installation of software into the deepest recesses of the computer in such a way that it can be contrived as spyware. When a company cannot be above board and honest with its customers and has to resort to software trickery to install copy protection through the backdoor, is it really someone that you can trust? If they cannot trust you the customer, then why should the customer trust the company?

So the end result is that Sony has produced another handsome piece of consumer electronics which pushes pure technology forward. But I suspect that with the DSC-R1 you will be given a disc with some software to install. Can you guarantee that the software does not install some covert software on your computer to prevent you playing Sony CDs, or playing Sony films either from DVD or downloaded from the internet?

You may conclude that this post is inflamatory, irrelevant or plain scaremongering, and if this was any other camera company I would agree. If it had been Microsoft there would be 100 and 1 other internauts who would drag out several examples to illustrate how bad Microsoft are. But Sony, who ever could believe that Sony has a greater desire to have control over their customers than Microsoft?

[StephenS]

I personally wouldn't be so concerned evaluating a product like this in terms of the manufacturer's track record, or trust, as you put it. This camera isn't a "systems" product, and although many accessories are available for it (to help make the whole offering profitable) I see it as yet again another "early end of life" photography product. In two or three years at most you won't hear or see much about this particular camera, something "newer and better" will be on the store shelves. Sony sees itself as a major consumer products player (it is) and acts as such, by attempting to set and define standards in it's own image. It's not all bad, some technologies play out well, others force the market to co-operate (eventually) and set standards.

I don't think many technologies are truly future proof, and variety in the marketplace is a natural outcome of large corporations acting like, er, well, large corporations.

My 2cents.

[61Dynamic]

A more recent example of Sony's disregard for their consumers is the scandal associated with their music CDs and installation of software into the deepest recesses of the computer in such a way that it can be contrived as spyware. When a company cannot be above board and honest with its customers and has to resort to software trickery to install copy protection through the backdoor, is it really someone that you can trust? If they cannot trust you the customer, then why should the customer trust the company?
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The disc DRM can't be contrived as spyware, it flat-out is spyware as well as predominately malware. The Sony DRM did not just install itself deeply into the computer but it also was poorly written, bogged down infected computers, posed a major security risk, violated copyright law (it was wrongly built upon open source software), caused damage to a system when removed and was installed dishonestly without disclosure violating several laws. Top that off with Sony's blatantly arrogant attitude about the ordeal, their refusal to apologize properly, and the fact that all of their "solutions" to remove it cause just as much harm as the rootkit itself and you got a heck of a fiasco.

You just can't trust a company that does such things. They clearly have a blatant disregard for their customers private property and fair-use rights.

It could be argued since Sony is divided up into segments with their Movie, music, photography, game, consumer electronic, etc departments operating fairly independently, that the part making the cameras wouldn't do such a thing as BMG did. However that would be missing the fact that those departments are all regulated by the same people who thought the rootkit thing was a good idea.

I never liked any of Sony's products due tho their determination to use proprietary standards but I give credit where credit is due. Sony is not the 800-pund gorilla it used to be. Any of the consumer products they sell have competing products from other companies that are just as good or better.

Due to this DRM crap it'll be a cold day in hell before I buy or recommend any Sony-made product.