Hacker Friendly

When you stop and look at the hidden costs of proprietary technology, it can be staggering to realize just how hostile some companies can behave against their own customers:

• MPAA: Region encoding and CSS for DVDs, lawsuits and intimidation for customers.
• TiVo: Mandatory firmware updates that remove features, add advertising, and interfere with legitimate use.
• HDMI: Video standard specifically designed to reduce the video quality of videos at the whim of content providers.
• Xerox (and others): Secretly embedding tracking codes in every printed page.
• VoIP: ISPs (and even whole countries) blocking Voice over IP access in favor of their own services.
• iTunes: Mandatory software updates that remove functionality. Apple is also accused of monopoly abuses, and iTunes has been declared illegal in Norway.
• HP: prematurely expiring and region-encoded ink cartridges, and vendor lock-in for Wi-Fi cards.
• Vista: Don’t get me started.

In the spirit of C.R.A.P., I think we need an acronym to refer to hacker unfriendly hardware, software, and business practices.

So far, I’ve come up with WASTE: Worthless Anti-Social Third-rate Equipment (not to be confused with W.A.S.T.E.). Can you think of a better term for high-tech bait and switch and nigh-fraud?