I'm not overreacting to this. I'm absolutely tired to learn that subscriptions are being pushed everywhere. Having to pay for something that is already in a vehicle is insulting to me. Car manufacturers should sell cars, not subscriptions of ANY kind. What's going to be tomorrow? Will I have to subscribe to a service to actually let my speakers emit sound despite that I have payed for them? Ridiculous today, a business tomorrow.
Any country with even half decent consumer protection would stop your imagined slippery slope scenario. You bought the speakers, as speakers? Then they need to operate like speakers, unless it was clear ahead of time that more is needed.
Software locking like this is bad for environmental / waste reasons. All of this complaining about there being a disconnect between what you willingly paid for and what the physical hardware components in the product you receive can technically do, is just a nerd’s argument. I agree with it. Subscriptions suck when there’s no ongoing cost to the seller. But I’m not going to pretend that this is some moral crusade, or be as emotionally invested as you quite obviously are.
