Let’s start with the article that started it all: Sony VAIO Customer Service, courtesy of Instapundit. It’s a classic horror story of dealing with a product support line for a large company; in this case, Sony seems to be feeling a little more belligerent than most.

From where I’m sitting, though, Sony’s behavior isn’t terribly surprising. Let’s take a look at the moves that Sony has made over the years:

- Creating MiniDisc, a wonderful idea at the time that, if it worked the way people wanted it to, would’ve made the iPod unnecessary. I have many a “fond” memory of dealing with Sony’s SonicStage software and its byzantine anti-copy mechanisms. I also have many a “fond” memory of looking at MiniDisc support on a Mac and realizing that, yes, Sony hates Apple. Great.
- Okay, so here’s the plan… right when everyone is all paranoid about spyware, we’re going to embed a piece of software on our CDs that, when you put the CD into your computer, will install itself and create a huge, gaping security hole in your machine, all so we can make sure you’re not copying our stuff. Good plan. Then, when everyone freaks out and says that we shouldn’t be doing this, we’re going to make an uninstaller that makes the problem worse and require people to get unsolicited junk e-mail in order to download it. Brilliant!
- Hmm… we sell a portable gaming console to a highly technical audience. How do we get more of those people to buy our product? I know - we’ll insult their intelligence! Yes!

And the list goes on.

Honestly, what amazes me more than anything at this point is that Sony is still in existence.

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