Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that's the case, why don't they already do this? It's totally feasible to design a phone that will brick itself when your contract ends. There's no legal impediment to doing it either.
Don't give them the idea. I can imagine the reasoning: "We've had disposable cameras that were never truly the customer's property, may as well extend it to phones." It could be argued that Apple were already doing this. Remember their updates that knowingly slowed down older phones? They claimed it was for performance reasons, but nowhere informed the user of this practice... Src: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2…
Apple's claim, which seems reasonable, was that they were slowing down phones on older batteries to prevent surprise shutdowns which were otherwise becoming very common. They did totally botch communication.