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So does this achieve anything other than fuck the people over who (probably unknowingly) wound up buying such a Blackphone? I can just imagine waking up, lookin

So does this achieve anything other than fuck the people over who (probably unknowingly) wound up buying such a Blackphone? I can just imagine waking up, looking at my phone which has been working perfectly well up until that point, and being told it now has been bricked for some licensing issue. This seems really scummy and would drive me away from their products forever.

Tepix 10y ago
I suppose it stops people from buying these dirt cheap phones and consider buying the original (if they want the SilentOS benefits).
brainfire 10y ago
Why would they care about driving away the one set of people who have already demonstrated they aren't interested in buying the phone from them?
- tokenizerrr 10y ago
  Most of these people probably just bought the phone from a store somewhere thinking it was legit.
  - brainfire 10y ago
    So you expect them in the future to seek out the higher priced legitimate product?
    - tokenizerrr 10y ago
      I expect they will avoid the brand that turned their hardware into a brick.
      - brainfire 10y ago
        I'm saying it doesn't matter if they avoid a brand if the alternative is that they will buy a knock-off. Neither option represents any value to the actual manufacturer- avoiding negative PR from people with knock-offs might actually be preferable.
        tokenizerrr 10y ago
        Well, I've never owned a Blackphone and after reading this article, I certainly never will.
        EdHominem 10y ago
        This isn't a gameboy. If you want toy security I can sell you a phone painted black. But if you want to stay alive when the Syrian police are hunting your people you might want to rethink that. I know people click through warnings. If that warning could keep them alive, as a dev I'd better do something that'll get their attention. Also, if they only softly bricked these phones the counterfeiters would just click-through the warnings and sell the phones that way. They have to essentially burn them, for the safety of people who need to be their customers.
        tokenizerrr 10y ago
        No, I'd just want an unbricked, functional, phone. The point is if you buy a $100 phone from wherever and it works, then it suddenly gets bricked due to some company pushing an update, that company is being a dick.
        EdHominem 10y ago
        Not if they're saving you from being shot. One of the features of a secure-phone is failing secure. If you want a regular phone running whatsapp, use that.
        tokenizerrr 10y ago
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  Because most of the users did not realize that they were buying the phone from them, they just bought the cheapest one they could find (from what seemed like an authorized retailer). Had the user known the phone was counterfeit, they may have bought the legitimate one.
ekidd 10y ago
> I can just imagine waking up, looking at my phone which has been working perfectly well up until that point, and being told it now has been bricked for some licensing issue. If I were to buy a Blackphone, I would do it because I wanted security, and because I trusted the manufacturer to provide it. The problem with security is that just because my phone appears to be "working perfectly" doesn't mean that somebody isn't eavesdropping on everything I say. A counterfeit Blackphone, in other words, is completely defective and untrustworthy, no matter how well it appears to work, because my trust in the manufacturer is broken.
- RubyPinch 10y ago
  But how does that lead to the logic of turning the hardware into a piece of trash, instead of just informing the user?
  - ddalex 10y ago
    If you don't turn the counterfeit phones into trash, there is no incentive for people to buy the real thing. This hurts the sales of Blackphones and the revenues and profits of the company which invested cash into developing the product - and harming their ability to provide security for genuine customers.
    - RubyPinch 10y ago
      So, protect the profit first, protect the customers second? I don't exactly see how it bumps up the profit though. You have a bunch of obviously interested customers, who want your product, and then the company has come out with "Actually, we expect you to buy the phone twice, because of a mistake that may or may not of been your fault"
      - EdHominem 10y ago
        The customers didn't buy a first blackphone, they bought something vaguely similar, but counterfeit. They literally bought a backdoor. Remember the hassle WhatsApp got for failing open? The Blackphone+SilentOS is an actual crypto device for people who believe they need crypto. It needs to fail closed. This may cost some people $100, but save their lives. This also gives the customers the ability to sue the sellers, or at least push for refunds via the sales platforms.
fuzzfactor 10y ago
A highly consumer-oriented company would at least offer a discount in trade for a real one, with a grace period. Plus extra points for following through by not actually ever remotely bricking the phones before the anticipated useful lifetime of the real thing. Nagging may or may not be very bearable depending on consumer goodwill.
Hondor 10y ago
If you bought a car that turned out to be stolen, you might wake up one day to find it's gone because the police recovered it for the owner. It's similar here - buyers looking for a bargain that might be illegal are part of the problem of IP theft. They can seek recourse through the seller they got it from, and if that doesn't work, they shouldn't have trusted a dodgy overseas black market seller with their money.
- icebraining 10y ago
  The analogy would work if IP "theft" was anything like actual theft, ie, if the company actually lost anything that could be recovered by "repossessing" the software. 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.
  - Hondor 10y ago
    They company surely did lose something. Customers who wanted to buy their product ended up buying an illegal competitor's product instead. There might even be some customers who go back and buy a genuine phone now that they can't use their fake one. 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.
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      You can't assume that someone who bought a $200 phone would buy the exact same phone for $300 if the $200 option was unavailable (I don't know the exact prices but the Ars article said that there were price differences of up to $100).
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    Going even further, the analogy is still a little bit flawed, because the people buying the phones have reason to believe the phone was NOT stolen (it came brand new, sealed in a box). 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.

Tepix 10y ago

I suppose it stops people from buying these dirt cheap phones and consider buying the original (if they want the SilentOS benefits).

brainfire 10y ago

Why would they care about driving away the one set of people who have already demonstrated they aren't interested in buying the phone from them?

tokenizerrr 10y ago
Most of these people probably just bought the phone from a store somewhere thinking it was legit.
- brainfire 10y ago
  So you expect them in the future to seek out the higher priced legitimate product?
  - tokenizerrr 10y ago
    I expect they will avoid the brand that turned their hardware into a brick.
    - brainfire 10y ago
      I'm saying it doesn't matter if they avoid a brand if the alternative is that they will buy a knock-off. Neither option represents any value to the actual manufacturer- avoiding negative PR from people with knock-offs might actually be preferable.
      - tokenizerrr 10y ago
        Well, I've never owned a Blackphone and after reading this article, I certainly never will.
        EdHominem 10y ago
        This isn't a gameboy. If you want toy security I can sell you a phone painted black. But if you want to stay alive when the Syrian police are hunting your people you might want to rethink that. I know people click through warnings. If that warning could keep them alive, as a dev I'd better do something that'll get their attention. Also, if they only softly bricked these phones the counterfeiters would just click-through the warnings and sell the phones that way. They have to essentially burn them, for the safety of people who need to be their customers.
        tokenizerrr 10y ago
        No, I'd just want an unbricked, functional, phone. The point is if you buy a $100 phone from wherever and it works, then it suddenly gets bricked due to some company pushing an update, that company is being a dick.
        EdHominem 10y ago
        Not if they're saving you from being shot. One of the features of a secure-phone is failing secure. If you want a regular phone running whatsapp, use that.
        tokenizerrr 10y ago
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
chipperyman573 10y ago
Because most of the users did not realize that they were buying the phone from them, they just bought the cheapest one they could find (from what seemed like an authorized retailer). Had the user known the phone was counterfeit, they may have bought the legitimate one.

ekidd 10y ago

> I can just imagine waking up, looking at my phone which has been working perfectly well up until that point, and being told it now has been bricked for some licensing issue. If I were to buy a Blackphone, I would do it because I wanted security, and because I trusted the manufacturer to provide it. The problem with security is that just because my phone appears to be "working perfectly" doesn't mean that somebody isn't eavesdropping on everything I say. A counterfeit Blackphone, in other words, is completely defective and untrustworthy, no matter how well it appears to work, because my trust in the manufacturer is broken.

RubyPinch 10y ago
But how does that lead to the logic of turning the hardware into a piece of trash, instead of just informing the user?
- ddalex 10y ago
  If you don't turn the counterfeit phones into trash, there is no incentive for people to buy the real thing. This hurts the sales of Blackphones and the revenues and profits of the company which invested cash into developing the product - and harming their ability to provide security for genuine customers.
  - RubyPinch 10y ago
    So, protect the profit first, protect the customers second? I don't exactly see how it bumps up the profit though. You have a bunch of obviously interested customers, who want your product, and then the company has come out with "Actually, we expect you to buy the phone twice, because of a mistake that may or may not of been your fault"
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      The customers didn't buy a first blackphone, they bought something vaguely similar, but counterfeit. They literally bought a backdoor. Remember the hassle WhatsApp got for failing open? The Blackphone+SilentOS is an actual crypto device for people who believe they need crypto. It needs to fail closed. This may cost some people $100, but save their lives. This also gives the customers the ability to sue the sellers, or at least push for refunds via the sales platforms.

fuzzfactor 10y ago

A highly consumer-oriented company would at least offer a discount in trade for a real one, with a grace period. Plus extra points for following through by not actually ever remotely bricking the phones before the anticipated useful lifetime of the real thing. Nagging may or may not be very bearable depending on consumer goodwill.

Hondor 10y ago

If you bought a car that turned out to be stolen, you might wake up one day to find it's gone because the police recovered it for the owner. It's similar here - buyers looking for a bargain that might be illegal are part of the problem of IP theft. They can seek recourse through the seller they got it from, and if that doesn't work, they shouldn't have trusted a dodgy overseas black market seller with their money.

icebraining 10y ago
The analogy would work if IP "theft" was anything like actual theft, ie, if the company actually lost anything that could be recovered by "repossessing" the software. 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.
- Hondor 10y ago
  They company surely did lose something. Customers who wanted to buy their product ended up buying an illegal competitor's product instead. There might even be some customers who go back and buy a genuine phone now that they can't use their fake one. 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.
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    You can't assume that someone who bought a $200 phone would buy the exact same phone for $300 if the $200 option was unavailable (I don't know the exact prices but the Ars article said that there were price differences of up to $100).
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  Going even further, the analogy is still a little bit flawed, because the people buying the phones have reason to believe the phone was NOT stolen (it came brand new, sealed in a box). 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.