[yardie]

They changed right after they started buying up movie production, music production, and game production. Then all the good engineering, good standards, and open nature were thrown out in favor of user lock-in, DRM, and piracy prevention.

If anything will be the downfall of Sony I have to say that Sony/Columbia Music started it. With their ridiculous copybit protection on DAT. How a million dollar division (media) dictates a billion dollar division (electronics) to come up with these schemes is beyond my comprehension.