Jailbreaking your iPhone

I recently came across an article online that discussed the legality of jail breaking your iPhone and whether or not Apple should have the right to protect its property. I look at this as a case of Apple being overzealous in regards to protecting their product. However, as far as consumers are concerned they bought a piece of hardware. It should be the consumer’s property and their right to do what they like with it. If similar applications are available for download for free from an open source, then why should the consumer pay more money for a program that is sub-par that Apple created? If Apple were to slap a label on their product saying, "pay more get less" then fine fair warning was given, but when you have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a product that has shown to break within months, owners should have access to applications at a fair rate.
The bottom line is that if a customer buys any machine they should be allowed to modify it without being told otherwise. If the operating system for the iPhone isn't preferred or any phone for that matter, then why shouldn't owners be allowed to install an open source operating system. Modifying the type of operating system is not costing Apple anything, unless consumers are downloading pirated applications. As long as no illegal activity is being performed the consumer should have every right to change their property.