Although, way back in the N64 days, Nintendo actually sold RAM upgrades.

(Not to mention, the tricks that were done by putting coprocessors in cartridges before then.)

Two problems with that.

#1, doesn't mean the textbook publisher has to release an update for free
#2, means that the textbook publisher can change the textbook on you without warning

...that you can resell a physical textbook, sometimes, and that cuts into textbook publisher profits.

Another approach if you're gonna do that would be a hard drive loop - a community-owned hard drive stuffed with warez. If you get it, you can copy everything off of it, but you have to add warez to it.

Ship it in a loop. Once it reaches the end of the loop twice (so that everyone can get everything that was added), the drive is traded with another group for their drive o' warez, and the cycle restarts.

Three ways to fix it, though.

Through the system, which means buying the politicians and laws to fix it.
Against the system, which means LITERALLY TAKING UP ARMS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT.
Abandoning the system, which is impractical in this day and age (all landmasses are claimed, so getting one falls into "against the system", and even seasteading means you're sharing a planet with the corrupt nation, and given that the US's actions have global impact, that doesn't work).

Given those three options, going through the system is probably the best one.

Well, here's the checks and balances that we, the people, have:

Voting the politicians that are doing it out of power - requires a majority of people who actually care, so it's rather unlikely
"Second amendment remedies" - immoral, incredibly dangerous, potentially way overkill (don't need to kill the politicians, just need to stop them from passing laws like this), and illegal, although potentially highly effective
Boycotting the businesses sponsoring the bill - ineffective except against smaller businesses
Interfering with the businesses sponsoring the bill - potentially highly effective if done right, but illegal, and can be difficult, and potentially falls under the "second amendment remedies" category but with innocents getting caught up in the fire, too

There actually is a way - the same way that iOS avoids malware installation.

The problem is, it's whitelisting.

Also, when the OLPC project started, they actually had to go full custom to do what they wanted, IIRC - the closest to what they were doing was either more expensive or SIGNIFICANTLY slower.

OLPC is ruggedized, though, the Chinese tablets aren't.

Yes, I did, I'm not using Verizon math.

The idea is to keep things cheap for legitimate e-mail senders (e-mail providers could even soak up that cost), but it becomes a noticeable cost once you're sending tens of thousands of e-mails.