When you buy something, you own it, right? Wrong! Recently we've seen DRM and "copy protection" take over our music collections, putting ridiculous restrictions on what we can and can't do with the goods that we've already paid for. Now Lexmark has gone one step further, telling us that it is now illegal to refill some of their printer cartridges. Meanwhile, some DVDs now have 10 minutes of ads at the beginning which you can't fast forward and it may even be illegal to tinker with your DVD player.

Techdirt does a good job of bringing these ideas together, suggesting that restrictions on digital goods are increasingly being exploited to benefit the makers of physical items:

"It was just a week and a half ago that we worried about when tinkering becomes illegal. We should adjust that, it's already become illegal in many cases -- and companies are loving it. This, despite the fact that each of these moves just makes the technology that much less valuable to consumers."

Personally, I think we should boycott any brand which restricts our right to reuse our purchases as we see fit. I won't be buying a Lexmark printer ever again and if you have any sense, neither will you. I call it anti-evangelism. Tell your friends.

Guest Author from Creative Reporter

Pete Cashmore is an entrepreneur and internet expert. His favorite buzzwords are Ruby on Rails, AJAX, blogging, Googlezon, home fabrication and RSS. He has a personal blog at mashable