I have seen plenty of examples and I do not believe those links were always there. There are several other members on this forum with corporate affiliations that have been far more objective when discussing brands they are affiliated with. They've even tangoed with JW.
This is my opinion. Take it or leave it. I am a consumer advocate and absolutely despise false or misleading information, generally in the form of "well r&d costs, blah blah blah." Just look above re: licensing costs. After the horrid defense of the Nagra battery incident, my opinion has been formed and is unlikely to change.
You can defend a product or brand while still being objective and fair to consumer concerns. Saying that your products are "not expensive" or that customers shouldn't be offended by being sold a sponge is not consumer friendly. It would be better to say nothing at all or "thanks for your concern, we'all pass it along."
Finally, just to re-iterate, my issue with this particular pricing model is that the hardware has already been sold. This is differently than software and a very slippery slope. Again, what's to stop a car manufacturer from pricing their cars via speed governors, even though every car produced for the last 50 years can go 80 mph? They would love to do this, but consumer outrage and competition won't allow it. They don't want you to even be able to repair your own car, using computers and secret diagnostic codes to make it as difficult as possible. Jailbreaking hardware is not illegal, at least not right now in the US, so if a company like Aeta wants to spend valuable r&d resouces to create needless firmware level, ultimately passing that cost on to the consumer, all I can say is that they better hope no one decides to jailbreak their hardware. It wouldn't take much more than a 15 year old hacker to unlock all features, which seems like a pretty good idea.