Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it. Rather than representing my interests, it is now an agent of someone else's top-down policy. And if enough people modify "their" devices to remove such restrictions, then there's a good chance that even more systems of control get deployed to prevent them from doing so.
>Except that such all-or-nothing logic is completely appropriate when talking about security of computational domains. Taking a device that is supposedly mine and configuring it to work against my interests repudiates the idea that I am the owner of it.
You mean like smartphones, proprietary operating systems, streaming devices, many (most?) IOT devices, digital books/music/movies and a host of other things?
Sorry, until there's some law/regulation (e.g., broadly confirming the First Sale doctrine[0] and/or similar stuff) that ship has sailed, my friend.
Mass adoption of centrally controlled devices doesn't change the paradigm of reasoning about computing freedom, though. This trend just means that the majority of computing devices aren't under the control of their owners, not that the idea of computational freedom is irrelevant.
In fact I would say barring some very strong laws that make de facto locked down devices outright illegal, there will always be more proprietary devices than libre ones. One of the chief goals of locking down computers is decommodification, meaning taking what could be a general purpose device and restricting it to one specific purpose. Even caring heavily about software freedom - I've got two librebooted desktops, two me_cleaned laptops, one microG phone, but still countless purpose-tailored devices that perform some proprietary function. If those proprietary functions (eg Google Voice SIP integration) could be straightforwardly done with libre software, then I could just consolidate those functions into the libre infrastructure.
