You seem to be identifying what they did in your first line, then go off on some kind of wild tangent in the rest of the post. As I read it, there is no case o

You seem to be identifying what they did in your first line, then go off on some kind of wild tangent in the rest of the post. As I read it, there is no case of any "service" or "subscription" happening here. It's just a design that relies on a single point of failure to determine whether or not a product can perform its designed functionality, which might be a bit ... sloppy from an engineering perspective. In general, answering "am I connected to the Internet?" without relying on things outside your control is hard, probably because the Internet is all about things outside your direct control. :)