Comment by kube-system

You're certainly allowed to modify the software, but that doesn't necessarily give you the right to connect it to hardware owned by other people. And AGPL does not provide for any right to services -- only a right to use and modify the covered work.

For example, AGPL doesn't prevent you from being banned from a Mastodon server.

The key part of the sentence you quoted is "... to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work" -- meaning, you can't use anti-circumvention to prevent people from using or modifying the copyrighted code.