Please explain to a complete doofus how can someone enforce this?

Cant they just download any linux distro from millions of different places and install them on any machine, even offline?

For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.

I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.

For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.