Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers. Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks.
Interestingly, data is legitimately scarce. But that's a discussion for another time...
You are assuming that my software is distributed.
Look 50 years ago you got a catalog from sears. You mailed a check, someone opened it, your order went to the warehouse, the check went to the bank, your items got picked packed and shipped.
The software I spent a good part of my career writing got rid of a LOT of people from that scenario. The hardware and software combination that is the ATM got rid of many tellers. MP3's killed record stores.
If you find a programer old enough, they will insult you by saying "I will replace you with a very small shell script". Many of us built software to replace people, many of us continue that. Our value is literally reducing costs and "enabling scale" at a massive discount. For those of us that do this sort of work, we are massively underpaid when compared to the manual processes that are replaced or never have to happen.
Once you build it, almost the only way to achieve scarcity is through IP law.
Well no, if it is hard to get software written people just won't bother. Most programmers will benefit from a commoditise-the-complement strategy where everyone is using software and need to hire programmers to tweak it to their exact needs.
The money is in support & hardware. Trying to primarily compete on software price is pretty risky; Open Source is quite competitive. The big paying companies in software (Googles, etc, of the world) don't particularly leverage IP law in their strategies. Even with players like Microsoft, artificial scarcity of their traditional primary products (Windows, Office) would be the kiss of death to the company.
I don't think there is much profit in hardware, most companies seem to work on razor thin margins.
Consider that Apple is America's most profitable corporation. They do squeeze people with software restrictions; and it is a core part of their strategy. But the focus of Apple has never been 'our software is rare', it has always been 'faster processor, thinner phone, better screen'. The artificial restrictions on the software aren't at all beneficial to the software or the programmers; they are part of a strategy to make the hardware more valuable. It is a strategic element to help their hardware resist the commodification of smartphones.
If they had inferior hardware then the restricted software strategy would see them crushed under the booted heal of groups like Samsung.