On the contrary, most individuals purchase a tangible copy of software in a retail store without any licensing terms attached at the time of purchase. (Granted: App Stores are changing this)
Shrink-wrap licenses attempt to end-run this by making the product unusable unless the user agrees to forfeit his existing property rights. The legality of these sorts of after-the-fact licenses on a traditional retail purchase is very unclear.
It's for this reason that many do not object to cracking or modifying software which they have purchased. Indeed, there's no definitive argument that one shouldn't.
I upvoted, but hope people understand that software shrinkwrap/clickwrap licenses are still a legal gray area. Yes, it's been this way for 25+ years, but it's still an exception to regular property rights.
This is a good point. When you buy hardware, you are now the owner of it so they shouldn't be able to stop you from doing it, just like once you buy a phone you should be able to unlock it or install whatever software you want on it.
> just like once you buy a phone you should be able to unlock it or install whatever software you want on it.
unless, of course you signed an agreement to not do that, in exchange for a cheaper price on the phone and some period of contract with a particular carrier...
Which is handled by contract law; it isn't clear why companies that want to do that should get a subsidy via criminal law DMCA penalties. Just like it isn't clear why white-only diners should have received free services from government thugs to throw out African American "trespassers".
> Can I put any bytes I want into it? How about the ones that cause software to skip a license check?
yes you can - as long as you didn't have a prior agreement to not do it. For example, you downloaded a piece of software off a torrent site. you didn't have any prior agreement with anyone about anything. The agreement between the uploader who originally first distributed the software and the copyright holder is the only place that is valid in my view.
If people hacking their hardware were a significant threat to the practice of binning, hardware manufacturers could simply make it more difficult and dangerous to hack.
On the other side, usually you don't own the software but only a license that grants you permission to use it.