Uh, you aren't allowing Sony to use your spare cycles, you're allowing Folding@Home (or more broadly, Stanford University's Pande Group) to use your spare cycles. And they are a non-profit organization who releases their findings for free. So, yes, you as part of the public can access the information you helped discover for free.

Even if Sony WAS a scientific conglomerate trying to find a cure, would you really want to put a hamper on reducing millions of deaths just because you don't want them to earn money? Please avoid discarding your common sense in favor of bashing a corporation you don't like. Oh, wait, this is Slashdot.

I know this might sound rather crazy but the beauty of linux is that it would be trivial to create a linux "Starter Edition" equally crippled. Someone good enough to roll their own distro should do this to compete with Microsoft on the CHEAP OS front.