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**Azreal13**

Voss wrote:
Azreal13 wrote:
You pay with cash or you pay with data. At best you could insist that data harvesting corporations must offer a cash based, data secure alternative for their services.

The idea that all these things are supplied for free is the thing that needs to change, people need to understand what all the free stuff they use is costing them and make an informed decision on whether it offers them value or not, just like with any other purchase or subscription.

No, the idea that this is a reasonable stance needs to change.

Your idea has no value whatsoever. There is no benefit to consumers becoming 'harvesting' victims, cash for merchandise is plenty. Any corporation or entity that insists otherwise can enjoy financial bankruptcy with their moral bankruptcy.

There's clearly a benefit to consumers allowing their personal data to being used for marketing purposes, literally everything on the internet that requires an account but offers services for free is a benefit. Social media, mapping and navigation, email and communication are all services that we'd be paying for if the information as payment model was outlawed or didn't exist.

If these services were cash only, you'd essentially begin to create a digital underclass who, for whatever reason, couldn't afford any or all of these things on top of the cost of getting online and the cost of a device to do so. Because of course the idea that these corporations would offer these things that so many rely on, that are even arguably essential to modern life, at reasonable cost is laughable.

A well educated consumer base would understand that a chancer like Razer trying to harvest their data for no real justifiable reason on top of relieving them of cash isn't on, and should, market forces being equal, choose an alternative who doesn't. Razer will then have a clear indication that what they're doing is out of order when a lot of people react like the OP, or simply don't buy.in the first instance.

**LordofHats**

Azreal13 wrote:
A well educated consumer base would understand that a chancer like Razer trying to harvest their data for no real justifiable reason on top of relieving them of cash isn't on, and should, market forces being equal, choose an alternative who doesn't. Razer will then have a clear indication that what they're doing is out of order when a lot of people react like the OP, or simply don't buy.in the first instance.

A well educated consumer would quickly find that such things don't matter that much because demand side market forces are not very strong right now. You can look at any number of industries; video games, ISPs, pharma, cell phones, etc. Companies in most of these industries engaged in legalized collusion (it's not 'collusion' when you're just adhering to the market standard) and there's zero real reason for most of them to offer a better product so much as a variant brand. You can't 'talk with your wallet' when the entire market is doing the exact same things and barriers to entry have increasingly risen such that new competitors in old markets are increasingly rare, especially in the service industry.

This logic completely falls apart in the real world.

**Azreal13**

That's beginning to stray into a different topic. Anti competitive practices are something that need legislative intervention, and indeed there's plenty of legislation to guard against that and other associated aspects such as monopolisation etc.

The issue is that it all guards against what those practices looked like in the 20th century, and these days, you're quite correct, there's homogenisation of the market which doesn't involve one brand dominating sales of a specific type of product. I can buy Samsung or Huawei and still be buying a Google product, I can buy a Lenovo or Dell PC and still be buying Microsoft.

We're living in an unprecedented era,.but we're still in the very early stages of it. There's already signs of consumer and government beginning to catch on to the ways the large corporations are exploiting data and taking steps to limit it. I think, given time, the data economy will begin to look something like the cash economy where people are more in control of how they spend it, but we're in the frontier times right now and it will take time for that to come into effect.

**Easy E**

LordofHats wrote:
Azreal13 wrote:
A well educated consumer base would understand that a chancer like Razer trying to harvest their data for no real justifiable reason on top of relieving them of cash isn't on, and should, market forces being equal, choose an alternative who doesn't. Razer will then have a clear indication that what they're doing is out of order when a lot of people react like the OP, or simply don't buy.in the first instance.

A well educated consumer would quickly find that such things don't matter that much because demand side market forces are not very strong right now. You can look at any number of industries; video games, ISPs, pharma, cell phones, etc. Companies in most of these industries engaged in legalized collusion (it's not 'collusion' when you're just adhering to the market standard) and there's zero real reason for most of them to offer a better product so much as a variant brand. You can't 'talk with your wallet' when the entire market is doing the exact same things and barriers to entry have increasingly risen such that new competitors in old markets are increasingly rare, especially in the service industry.

This logic completely falls apart in the real world.

To continue a theme from other threads.....

we really need to end Guilded Age II: Guild Harder with some strong anti-Trust and anti-monopoly legislation. However, I expect that about as much as I expect a Martian Invasion....

**SagesStone**

It just seems to be for managing your light settings profiles. I just used a throw away email.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Matt Swain wrote:
Too many eole seem to have forgotten that you can say "No" to a business, and not enough know how good it feel to do it.

I tried to get information about a video service i was interested in once. I called and got, surprise, someone who clearly had not grown up speaking english. I asked some basic questions about the business and he relies with a barrage of questions, not one answer.

I told him I was not going to answer any questions until i knew enough about his company to decide if it was worth looking into.

He resonds with a pleasant "Policy policy, policy. Policy. Policy, policy. Now can i have yur name please?"

I again said No and repeated my refusal to answer any questions until a few questions of mine were answered.

He tells me his system is set up he cannot answer questions without inputting answers to all the ones he 's asking.

I told him he'd told me all i needed to know about his company then and hung up. Felt so good!

Dollar general has started demanding your birthdate when you buy a dvd there,. even if it's not R rated. I told them the movie wasn't age restricted and was told it was policy to get a birthrate for all dvds.

I refused to give one and got told it was 'policy' again.

I told her "I don't worship your company policy."

She told me she couldn't sell it to me and tok the dvd out of my reach. Then and I just walked out, leaving my other stuff on the counter. Felt good and I got the dvd elsewhere.

My local store seems to have eased up on that now.

If enough people just said no to policy, it'd have to change.

I appreciate where you're coming from, and I agree. I never give out more information than I have to and 95% of the time it's not a problem even if it means not buying a certain product (the damned parking permit pissed me off because it was an area where I really didn't have many options).

But, I also feel like you're thinking too small. Unless you cut yourself off from technology, everything is spying on you. Smart phones are the worst, but even regular computers are just data mining machines these days. I'm not saying it's okay for them to do so, but worrying about a checkout chick asking you for your birthdate because of some ill-conceived policy is so small compared to the level of spying out there these days.

But most people just don't care. I've spoken to people about specific apps and seen a look of horror on their face as they gradually realise the app they just installed from some unknown source now has enough information to steal their identity.

**Dreadwinter**

My corsair keyboard also has an application that I have to download if I want to use all the functions.

Same for my Logitech speakers.

Oddly, I don't have to do that for my Razer Naga.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Dreadwinter wrote:
My corsair keyboard also has an application that I have to download if I want to use all the functions.

Same for my Logitech speakers.

Oddly, I don't have to do that for my Razer Naga.

I don't know if it's still the case, but keyboards using the default windows USB drivers had a limit on the maximum number of keys you could press simultaneously, so there was time it made sense for high end keyboards to require software (though registration is overkill). And macros generally require software as they're not hardware level macros.

USB speakers and amps are similar, the default windows drivers often don't have all the features that can be accessed by device-specific drivers and software. I went out of my way to buy a USB DAC/amp that has all the features accessible through the front panel of the amp itself (so I'm not relying on the motherboard's DAC, but also am not bound by the computer's software and drivers).

**Cybtroll**

I think that th most infuriating point is the one when you pay a full price AND have to provide freely data to use something you pay in full.

Give me the option, and I'll think about. Otherwise it's a scam.
Never use anything Razer before, but this is good to know ^°

**Matt Swain**

I will say one thing, when I took it back to walmart the refund went painlessly. I explained I did not want to let a company know every time I started you my computer and they refunded me the money. A gun next to me in line heard what I said and was surprised at how excessive their demand was just to have some pretty lights on a keyboard.