Hardware Manufacturers Gouging Customers

rahlquist writes "An article over at infoworld discusses that buying that used router on ebay may not be a good deal if Cisco can find its way to screwing you. What's next, buy a used Ford and pay Ford to transfer the license for the onboard computer's OS or face piracy charges if you continue to drive?"

Comments

Re:What's the point?

[gaijin99]

what benifit do they think they would have screwing their customers out of trying to recoup some of their costs?

Some managerial types have some very odd ideas about money. I knew a person who ran a motel back in the 1980's. He was charging $50/room in an area where the standard price was around $40/room. Needless to say he didn't rent very many rooms. A friend of mine was his accountant, and he suggested that the motel owner drop his prices to rent out more rooms. Mr. Idiot was horrified at the idea: "If I did that, I'd be loosing $10 on ever room I rented!" Apparently he had the fixed idea that when a room was rented he somehow deserved $50, so it was preferable to him to rent very few rooms at a higher price than to rent more rooms at a somewhat lower price. Eventually he went out of business.

Doubtless the same sort of idiocy is going on here.

The hardware manufacturers have always hated sale of used hardware. Using software licensing this way is just a club to try and smash the used hardware market, it has nothing to do with them worrying about their precious little software license being violated. One copy of software was bought, one copy of software exists. In this situation they have been paid for every copy of the software being used; no piracy is taking place. The entire "You bought a software license from us, and you can't sell that" line is total tripe. It may be legal, but it damn sure isn't right. The law needs to be changed to prohibit that sort of crap.