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Disabling online features in retaliation is a practice in which businesses deny access to online functionality because the user of a product did not adhere to terms / policies unrelated to the online service. Making the product less useful and less valuable.
How it works
Business may use this practice in a situation where the product has online features that most customers would find valuable, the customer cannot chose the provider for this online service (usually by the same manufacturer as the device) and the business has an anti-competitive reason to enforce restrictions on the product that are technologically difficult to enforce directly.
The product will use some kind of detection mechanism to determine if the customer breaks one of the manufacturers terms and in retaliation disable the online features the customer cared about.
As a result the product has decreased utility and (resale) value, harming the customer.
Why it is a problem
Examples