alt Hacker NewsI struggle to think of it as insidious. The problem you have is you're reading it wrong. There is no monthly licence. It's an annual licence that you can either pay up front or split, either way, you need to pay.
In 1995 it cost us the equivalent of $2k up front to buy Photoshop. I think there was actually a small discount but it was a hecking big payout. You'd get to keep that version forever, but what if you only needed it for a month? What happened when just a year later Photoshop 4 came out? Tough.
I get that software subscriptions suck, but it's the compromise that makes it both affordable to you in your life, and affordable to Adobe.
It’s insidious because you’re being required to agree to pay for a year of use, split monthly, but cannot decide to cancel during the term of the agreement without paying for use that you don’t want. Just because the terms are clear doesn’t mean it’s not an insidious pricing scheme.
If it were not insidious, it would be easy to answer the question: “what costs for adobe are being covered by the early termination fee?” - but there aren’t any costs, the fee is a punishment to dissuade you from cancelling and hoping that you will miss the window to prevent automatic renewal.