No, we don't. We need to enforce right of First Sale, and stop propping up predatory buisness models by giving them a free pass.

The moment things started to not ship with programming guides, and everyone started hiding their IC schemata and docs for fear of being sued were the first steps down this path we're going down.

I will not continue to follow it blindly, and I hope more people will join me as well. This has to stop.

Independent of copyright law, people have a more fundamental right to contract as they wish. If people wish to pay less by allowing a lack of full control of hardware in their possession, then we shouldn't stop them. To assert otherwise is to deny them a basic liberty. True, if many accept such limitations then it creates a kind of market pressure, but that's just competition, and we have no natural right to be protected from competition.

That's very clever trying to cast it as the customer who is desirous of this contract, when in fact that can't be further from the truth; it is often the seller who is, in fact pushing a contract, which isn't a genuine contract as soon as they figure out the technical means to do so?

I reject your assertion of the supremacy of the contract. The contract is a vehicle subordinate to State regulation , and the State recognizes there are things that cannot be contractually done, selling oneself or another into servitude being one, and I hold, that violation of First Sale rights should be another. To do anything else is to undermine the very concept of private ownership. When industry colludes and makes standard the practice of not offering wares for sale under traditional terms, I hold this as an appropriate circumstance for the State to step in, particularly when it is made as obvious that poor faith is at the root of the business practice. Insult me not with assertions that finding a way to extract multiple payments, or extort out recurring revenue by "unlocking" functionality via firmware delivered over the air is anything but poor faith veneered in the illusion of convenience for the customer in light of the purveyor also gaining the capability to at will degrade the product by definition.

We can deal with it by not buying them.

Let me shake your hand :) This is the first thing I do in these situations. The second - I explain and encourage others to do the same.

I think at some point, it will become a competitive advantage to sell devices and platforms that are not locked in. Kind of like the way Linux crushed the competition in the server space. Open hardware might eventually become what everybody wants. Seems like right now everyone is on a path to Windowsify everything, but that could change.

Sounds crazy? Keep in mind, people used to pay money for programming language licenses. How many people are doing that anymore? Are the people who pay for that kind of stuff competitive businesses?