Well, printer cartridges already have encrypted chips so you can't change the fill status, so has the future been here for a while?
Technically even this single byte is "DRM", it's just a really simple DRM.
Or, technically, it's not "digital rights", since the "R" stood for copyright as applied to works of art (music/movies/video games).
Maybe they should just make each cartridge have an NFT, snort.