I was trying to resist jumping back in here. I have failed.
In the past you purchased something and it was purely a hardware product. If you wanted to improve it, change it, whatever, there was no impediment at all. Of course if you improved on an object, repaired it when it wasn't designed to be repaired, you "robbed" the company that made the product of another sale. Too bad for the company but it was moral and legal.
Shift a century and to the power of the corporation growing. Corporations are made to make money for the shareholders, even if it means to the detriment of anyone else. Now corporations have BIG influence on what laws are made, and usually to the detriment of anyone else. Get the laws changed so modifying software in something is illegal and now you can make all your devices reliant on software and illegal to repair or modify. So all any company needs to do now is design whatever they want, design in any obsolescence, intentional timed failure, a "bug" that makes people want to buy the next thing to get one without a bug, and hide behind the government backed (and bribed) hijacking of the right of an individual to actually own something and have the right to use it as they see fit. And if you find out about these intentional problems or limitations hidden in the software, you have just become a criminal for that fact of looking.
The law is no longer a just process but for sale to the highest bidder or blackmailer. Trying to tell people that they can't do what they want with what they paid their money for is just the corporations pulling the puppet strings of the law makers so they can make more money. It is not just law, it is robber baron time all over again.