It was a court that did this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Fran....

> Some american politician extended copyright protection towards software. The rest of the world eventually did the same.

>> Is this desirable?

> No.

So I'm sure you'd be happy if I just took the software for whatever great startup idea you'd been slaving away on for the last two years, slapped better marketing on it, and undercut you by 50% since I didn't have to employ all those pesky overpaid engineers.

If someone purchased a product from me, and then used it however they want, that's fine.

It is their product at that point, because they purchased it.

You should not have the rights to control someone else's product, such a a graphics card, or whatever, after they have purchased it. It's theirs now.

You're free to write your own graphics driver for the hardware you own, just as Nvidia is free to not help you.

Nvidia is free to not give out any graphics driver, however, that would make their graphics cards unfunctional and hard to sell.

However, if nvidia has sold me a functional graphics card including the driver as an unalienable part of the package that I purchased (since the driver being functional is part of the card being 'fit for purpose' of the sale), I should be free to use the driver without any unreasonable restrictions. I have legally bought [a copy] of it, it's not copyright infringement for me to run it on a computer - even if it resides in a datacenter.

> your own graphics driver

My whole point is that there needs to be more efforts to hack and modify these things, and that this would be "more desireable".

And that orgs should be using their power to cause this to happen more. For example, if open source orgs can weaponize licensing agreements against nvidia, in order to force them to do this, then they should and this would be desireable.

If only! The hardware is made so that only software written by nvidia can drive the graphics card.

Buy a Radeon. I'm not seeing the problem. You have options? Nobody is forcing you to buy Nvidia hardware.

> You have options? Nobody is forcing you to buy Nvidia hardware.

Laptops are generally an all or nothing proposition. I wanted a laptop with a high performance CPU and the nvidia GPU just came along with it. Couldn't even disable the thing in firmware since hardware video decoding with the Intel GPU caused kernel panics.

If you claim it matters, but not enough to impact the purchasing decision, did it actually matter?

Like you showed your disapproval of Nvidia by giving them your money anyway. So... They're right - people care enough to complain, but not buy something else, so it doesn't really matter.

> So... They're right - people care enough to complain, but not buy something else

Are you aware of the concept of market power, switching costs, barriers to entry, and market lock in?

If so, then that should enlighten you as to the explanation for this.

> did it actually matter?

Yes. It matters, yet still did not change consumer behavior, due to the concept of market power.

How can you take software that was never published in the first place? There's a reason everything is a service these days. So what's the point of these protections?