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What are our alternatives? I’ve said in posts before that legislating against each anti-consumer product or feature is a fool’s errand. The legislature cannot keep up the rate at which corporate entities produce consumer-unfriendly products. I also don’t trust it to represent citizens rather than corporate donors, at least here in the US.

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Pitchforks? Seriously though, your comment is way too defeatist. Legislature has worked for centuries for this problem. Imperfectly, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

But if all else fails, giant corporations are eventually going to get the good ol' pitchforks up their butt.

To the contrary, I think settling for a mechanism that (maybe) cleans up the damage after it’s done is defeatist.

This isn’t a case where you have to wait until after the damage is done though. Making a blanket regulation of “you can’t sell a physical good that has its capabilities artificially limited to create price brackets”, or something similar, would work in advance of people trying to sell such products in the US market.

I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it is to be expected.

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