We can’t fight the right to break the digital lock. They are getting increasingly unbreakable. We must void the right of the vendor to apply such a lock in the first place.
For example, Google uses "Android Integrity" (remote attestation) to lock out competitors to Android and Google Play. If you want to create a competitor, you need it to be compatible with existing apps or you can't get off the ground. The customer who adopts your alternative system wants to install the app for their bank and if it doesn't work they regard your system as broken and stop using it. That's fine, Android is open source. You can implement compatibility with existing apps.
Only now Google's servers tell the bank's app not to run on your competing system, because it isn't Google's. But the apps aren't going to specifically target your new system until you have users -- which you can't get without apps.
This is a very different problem than DRM, because people variously find ways to break the DRM, and they only have to do it once to unlock everything. Even if the vendor patches it, it's too late, all the content is already on the pirate sites.
Whereas with attestation, it often gets cracked, but then it's only cracked most of the time. Every once in a while, at random, your competing device breaks and you have to wait a few days for someone to crack the attestation again. Which normal users are not going to put up with, so an alternative competitor can't gain a foothold. That is a serious antitrust problem.
I agree that the locks shouldn’t be allowed. At the minimum, it should be false advertising to describe exchanging money for a DRM-infected product as a “sale”.
That said, I’ve watched an endless parade of unbreakable encryption being broken. I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
