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This nonsense started the moment that we shifted in to licensing models and thus away from ownership models.

Change my mind.



We’ve had IP laws in some form since at least the 16th century, probably earlier.


And which of those laws was written to allow hardware manufacturers to artificially limit what you could do with a product you had bought just because it happens to also have a software component?

The corruption of copyright to serve entirely different purposes from its original intent, with the goal of artificially giving a manufacturer ongoing control of hardware products after purchase, is a buyer-hostile abuse of the legal framework that should have been comprehensively blocked long ago, whether it's related to your personal computer, your vehicle, your TV...


Echoing @Silhouette’s comment: having IP laws has not meant (to my knowledge) that companies could dictate what a customer did with tangible goods that they purchased legally. Not until the past couple decades.




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