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I mean, I think the answer to 1 is "yes". They wouldn't have bought the asset if they couldn't extort their customers. Now you at least have the option to pay t

• like_any_other 1y ago
  > Now you at least have the option to pay to continue access, versus having no maintenance at all. They locked the owners out of their devices, hence the bounty from Rossmann to "hack" them. They gave one option, but took one away. > I think the answer to 1 is "yes". They wouldn't have bought the asset if they couldn't extort their customers. It's definitely how the law is currently being applied, and they probably won't have legal trouble from it, but I argue this is a corruption of ownership law, and any kind of update that is against the device owner's wishes (that they are deliberately prevented from reverting) is equivalent to criminal hacking. I can't emphasize this enough - the devices in question do not belong to them. They sold them, these are privately-owned computers they are interfering with. Especially in the case of bankruptcy - the device owners have no more of a business relationship with this new owner, than they do with a random hacker making printers emit goatse.
  • foobarian 1y ago
    Sadly this is probably all clearly spelled out in the original fine print. And the only way to guarantee you can avoid these kind of shenanigans is to go full Stallman and run everything yourself.