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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

it oughta be illegal that we can't run the software we want and the software we write on the devices we buy.

Yeah, I mean; stealing things from a campus and breaking into networks aside; people shouldn’t charged for anything illegal for hacking devices they buy and passing on that info. It’s crazy it’s not allowed in the first place. There is a perfectly fine way of preventing that; just say the device is not yours but you paid to rent it for a period (say 10 years); the device does not belong to you. Then you can say it’s illegal to mod, but if it’s yours I find it absolutely insane you cannot reverse engineer, repair or mod it.

It is no less insane if they "just say the device is not yours but you paid to lease it".

Why? If it’s not your property... If you rent a car, you cannot remove the doors, if you buy it you can, that’s accepted. What’s the difference? In return, when it’s broken, the owner (the one you rent it from) needs to repair it. Unlike when it’s bought and out of (some kind of) warranty.

Because it's essentially a lie. As revealed by your formulation "just say" -- your experience is no different if everything in your possession is 'owned' by you and illegal to modify, or if they change their mind and "just say" everything in your possession that matters with regard to this isn't really 'owned' by you at all. It's not a step forward, it leaves you in exactly the same position. If it is insane, then "just saying" something doesn't make it more sane.

My concern is the experience of not having control over our equipment (not a good experience or way to live), not a semantic technicality.

It is not a technicality; it is a way of legally doing it. I see your point though; buying is, with the added burden of patents and copyright on top, a wrong term. You cannot buy anything in the sense we would like to buy it.

Whether it's legal or not to prevent you from running the software you want and the software you write on your xbox, IMO it _oughta_ be illegal, whether they just say you are leasing it or not.

Cant have millions of people leading consoles. That leave the onus of disposal with the owner. In 10 years time Microsoft have a million Xbox to cleanly dispose of.

No, the other way around: It shouldn't be possible to forbid this. The government allows and actually enables companies to forbid this (and a lot of other IP related stuff) in the first place.

Agreed except the modified devices should be restricted from joining the online community of non-modified devices

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