It'd be interesting if some people brought a legal challenge against Sony for their work: the mandatory firmware updates could potentially be construed as Sony flagrantly violating the owner's rights under trademark law, namely their rights under the "first-sale doctrine." We'd probably also see probably just how large "1% of PS3 owners" really is; I have the impression it's more than the 479,000 it'd have to be in order to be only 1%. Those who make such claims seem to be just trying to blindly defend Sony, even at the expense of those who enjoy Sony's products. My guess? I'd say around 12%, which, to put it into perspective, is more than the 11.5%, or
5.5 million that own Gran Turismo 5.
That's right, folks, if you buy a PS3, you
own it; not Sony. Sony has no grounds to dictate how you dispose of (use) the console once you've purchased it. They can't tell you you're not allowed to re-sell it, they can't make it illegal to jailbreak/mod/hack it, etc. All you're prevented from doing is violating their patent, which simply means you're not allowed to reverse-engineer their designs and try and clone it. (note that copyrights are SLIGHTLY more restrictive on the purchaser, but most of the rights/freedoms granted under the FSD still apply)