Seems like a stretch. The person interacting with the hardware need not know or care about the software. Under that same logic I think you could:
(1) Buy an alarm clock with an embedded chip
(2) Contained in the packaging was a link to a license agreement. You never read it and certainly didn't agree to it.
(3) A year later, weekday alarms are remotely disabled because you've used up your free trial. The license specifies $3/mo as the rate to continue being woken up on weekdays.
Courts are already not upholding a lot of this "reading this ToS constitutes agreement to all future versions" bullshit in modern software, and I doubt they'd be friendly to the idea that somebody can be beholden to a contract they had no good reason to even know about.
In that case, I think you'd potentially have a counter-claim for breach of implied warranty.
In your scenario, the buyer wouldn't have a contract other than they bought the clock and it was implied to work as a clock. You could have a claim for breaking the device, but the first-sale doctrine gives you copyright protection regardless of what you do to the clock.
In the article, thieves have no contract, so they have no right to anything to do with the devices.
Have you seen the recent rulings out of the Supreme Court? They’re ruling off of their feelings and poorly justifying their conclusions by working backwards and making stuff up from whole cloth whenever necessary.
Don’t take a random dudes word for it. These lawyers put their real names with their opinions when calling out the ideological hacks masquerading as Supreme Court justices.
(1) Buy an alarm clock with an embedded chip
(2) Contained in the packaging was a link to a license agreement. You never read it and certainly didn't agree to it.
(3) A year later, weekday alarms are remotely disabled because you've used up your free trial. The license specifies $3/mo as the rate to continue being woken up on weekdays.
Courts are already not upholding a lot of this "reading this ToS constitutes agreement to all future versions" bullshit in modern software, and I doubt they'd be friendly to the idea that somebody can be beholden to a contract they had no good reason to even know about.