Not sure where the younger people thing came from, but I'm 45 and have been working in this industry since 1999. But even when I was in my 20s, I don't remember considering that I had a "right" to do something with a company's product before they've sold it to me.

In fact, I would say the idea of entitlement and use of words like "rights" when you're talking about a company's policies and terms of use (of which you are perfectly fine to not participate. rights have nothing to do with anything here. you're free to just not use these tools) feels more like a stereotypical "young" person's argument that sees everything through moralistic and "rights" based principles.

If you don't want to sign these documents, don't. This is true of pretty much every single private transaction, from employment, to anything else. It is your choice. If you don't want to give your ID to get a bank account, don't. Keep the cash in your mattress or bitcoin instead.

Regarding "legit" - there are absolutely "legit" actors and not so "legit" actors, we can apply common sense here. I'm sure we can both come up with edge cases (this is an internet argument after all), but common cases are a good place to start.

You cannot search for bugs or vulnerabilities in "a company's product before they've sold it to you", because you cannot access it.

Obviously, I was not talking about using pirated copies, which I had classified as illegal activities in my comment, so what you said has nothing to do with what I said.

"A company's policies and terms of use" have become more and more frequently abusive and this is possible only because nowadays too many people have become willing to accept such terms, even when they are themselves hurt by these terms, which ensures that no alternative can appear to the abusive companies.

I am among those who continue to not accept mean and stupid terms forced by various companies, which is why I do not have an Anthropic subscription.

> "if you don't want to give your ID to get a bank account, don't"

I do not see any relevance of your example for our discussion, because there are good reasons for a bank to know the identity of a customer.

On the other hand there are abusive banks, whose behavior must not be accepted. For instance, a couple of decades ago I have closed all my accounts in one of the banks that I was using, because they had changed their online banking system and after the "upgrade" it worked only with Internet Explorer.

I do not accept that a bank may impose conditions on their customers about what kinds of products of any nature they must buy or use, e.g. that they must buy MS Windows in order to access the services of the bank.

More recently, I closed my accounts in another bank, because they discontinued their Web-based online banking and they have replaced that with a smartphone application. That would have been perfectly OK, except that they refused to provide the app for downloading, so that I could install it, but they provided the app only in the online Google store, which I cannot access because I do not have a Google account.

A bank does not have any right to condition their services on entering in a contractual relationship with a third party, like Google. Moreover, this is especially revolting when that third party is from a country that is neither that of the bank nor that of the customer, like Google.

These are examples of bad bank behavior, not that with demanding an ID.