As far as I'm concerned if you sell a product with a certain feature and then remove it you are stealing from the consumer. Sure they can choose not to apply the firmware, but then they can't play the games that they payed for either on PSN or new titles. That is fraud plain and simple if you ask me.
As for the argument that the manual allows them to do this. First off many countries do not recognize the legality of a post-sale agreement modification. In addition there is nothing you can print that can change the application of the law. For instance if the PS3 manual said that by purchasing the system you entered bondange that would not be legally permissible even if you "accepted" the terms via purchase. Post sale agreements are a gray area at best. Especially ones that are as anti-consumer as this one.
XBL: WiiVault Wii: PM me PSN: WiiVault
PC: AMD Athlon II Quadcore 635 (OC to 4.0ghz) , ATI Radeon 5770 1GB (x2)
MacBook Pro C2D 2.8ghz, 9600m GT 512 iMac: C2D 2.0, X2600XT 256
