&quot; but I don&#x27;t agree that altering the welder that I own should be a federal crime&quot;<p>Altering plenty of things is a federal crime.<p>You can&#x27;t file the serial number off a gun, for example.<p>As a more apropos example, you can&#x27;t make a sawed off shotgun. it is a federal crime to possess them, and this includes making them, without paying some tax and registering for a permit.<p>If you want a less violent example, most medical devices can&#x27;t be modified, etc.<p>&quot;We&#x27;re changing the very definition of property here to support some company&#x27;s price discrimination scheme.&quot;<p>No, we really aren&#x27;t.  While completely controlling everything you can do with every physical device you own is a great theory, it&#x27;s definitely not reality, nor has it been, for many many years.  It&#x27;s definitely not &quot;the very definition of property&quot;.<p>In fact, historically property law <i>was worse</i>.  If you physically mutilated or damaged some things you owned (religious, etc), you could often get stoned&#x2F;killed.<p>&quot;The grand purpose, though, is upholding the notion that when I own a thing that means I am free to do I want with it.&quot;<p>You are working off the premise that this changes the state of the that. It does not.
That is because this notion has never been upheld, and i can point to tons of examples of physical property you can own but are not free to do what you want with.