But isn't that really no different than paying rent on a house or apartment? You never actually own the place. Stop paying the rent and they boot you. Property taxes are the same. Even if your mortgage is paid after 30 years or however long, you still have to pay property taxes the rest of your life - aka rent - or you get booted. And in some areas of the US, property taxes are higher than 12 months of mortgage payments.

The sub money goes towards the use of the software for however long you chose to 'rent' it. They don't prevent you from accessing the files and projects you created during that usage, only the files you have in storage on their servers, which seems to be up to the user whether they store their files there or not, based on what others have said here, and things I've read elsewhere. There are other programs that can read .psd files. (I'm not sure about .ai files), Videos you create can be played in a number of players, etc.   

I used to think that using the apps meant that everything you created in them were automatically created in the cloud and not on your PC, but that's obviously not the case. For $600 a year (or $50/mo.) I can have access to most all of their software and automatic updates, vs. $20/mo. for each individual app. (some of their apps aren't yet included in CC and still have to be purchased separately but I don't really have much use for those apps anyway), along with free website/portfolio hosting and access to a network of other artists and potential clients/collaborators.  I never upgraded from CS4 before cause it would have cost me another couple grand or more to do so and just could never afford it. I was going to sign up for another years' worth of web hosting at the old host I was using but that's another $150 yr and I have to build the site myself - or find a designer I can afford, which isn't possible at the moment for me.

Anyone using e-mail or automatic back-up services like Carbonite, etc., are using the cloud. So I don't get what all the paranoia is about. And there is no such thing as an unlisted phone number. It just means it doesn't show up in a directory. There are a lot of marketing agencies that pay big money for "unlisted" phone number lists - I used to work for one of them.