Bear Ribs
Well-known member
The primary issue here is that now the Manufacturer loses if the customer can modify their own car and just turn the block off on their own... which in turn means the manufacturer is next going to start either lobbying to make repairing your own car illegal or booby-trapping it to make your car brick itself if you do your own repairs. This means everybody who tries to do work for themselves is going to lose their right to repair. Once that right starts hemorrhaging it's fairly likely to spiral out until you can't even change your own oil or repair a flat tire, got to pay their specific overpriced certified mechanic group to do it or your car turns into a two-ton paperweight. This in turn destroys competition and promotes monopolies, as who's going to trust some upstart new company when their cars may brick themselves if they go out of business, or risk that this smaller dealer doesn't even have any certified mechanics where you're moving?Well, look at it this way -- why should the manufacturer be forced to give you options for free? This actually does give the customer more choices; by having the options physically present but software disabled, it allows you to retroactively buy the options later on, rather than just *not having them forever*.
Answering the question more directly and giving some TL;DR, the manufacturer shouldn't be forced to give you options for free. However they should absolutely not be allowed to modify or take away things you've already purchased, nor dictate what you're allowed to do with your own property. The problem is, the subscription hardware service cannot make a profit unless they're allowed to dictate what you're allowed to do with your own property, so they will find a way do so, and almost certainly already have a way to do so or they wouldn't be offering it.