Obviously that's not the point, here. The fact that Samsung has the ability to brick a TV remotely _at all_ is ridiculous. It's not hard to imagine this being used by an attacker to shut down all Samsung TVs remotely, or for planned obsolescence if you want to be more cynical.
Or.....against thieves. As someone who had stuff stolen, I'd pay money for electronics that catches fire once reported stolen, thieves are literally scum of the earth and only one step above murderers and rapists in my books. Great step by Samsung here.
I can't argue with your assessment of thieves, but if you're going to have self-destruct mechanisms in your devices, appliances, or car, do you really trust a company like Samsung with the red button? Wouldn't you rather have that under your own control?
That would be about as huge of a security failure as an attacker sending out a malicious OS update for any other device, except with a planned, controlled way to disable TVs, Samsung could reenable them promptly once they realize.
Intentionally disabling purchased devices to force them to buy new ones is called trespass to chattels and is illegal.
I am not a South African lawyer, but it is almost assuredly part of their common law if nothing else. Being based more on Roman-Dutch law, they probably call it an Aquilian action instead.
