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> it is absurd that the law places any limits whatsoever on the act of examining how an artifact you legally own functions.

You’re just smuggling in your own implicit definition of “legally own”.

As you’ve pointed out, “ownership” is a legal construct. One that can feature any number of limitations or clauses through the execution of a contract.

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> You’re just smuggling in your own implicit definition of “legally own”.

I suppose before trade secret laws were effectively expanded to items in our own homes, the commonly accepted definition of "own a thing" was "you are allowed use of the thing, but not to examine how the thing works"?

It's not I who is doing the smuggling, and there's a reason the law uses obfuscatory language.

I don't think "you can't examine how a thing works" has ever been a condition of ownership. And even current trade secret laws carve out exceptions for information that can be obtained via other means. The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (with 1985 amendments) explicitly mentions reverse engineering being OK and includes references to relevant case law.

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