It's good in the sense that it's not clear there's a better alternative, but there is a painful point with a significant part of the market using a crippled des

It's good in the sense that it's not clear there's a better alternative, but there is a painful point with a significant part of the market using a crippled design and losing value -- just to make the market segmentation possible. If there was some other way to do the market segmentation: those who derive $X of value from the chip pay $X, and those who derive $Y pay $Y, without the crippling, then more economic value would be derived. An example alternative for this approach could possibly be funding such developments with income tax. Then everyone can gain from the benefits of an uncrippled product, and the income tax already approximates how much value you gain from the R&D. This introduces a whole host of other problems, of course, but it does solve the crippling problem.