[op00to]

Your police analogy only makes sense if you shop at a warehouse club. You sign a contract (subscription) that agrees to let you take whatever you want (content) from the warehouse store (vendor), but at the end of the year (subscription term), you agree to let the warehouse club work out what you took (true-up) from the store by looking in your garbage (logs, DB, whatever you use to track usage).

If you then are so disorganized at your job that you empty the trash, throw out the receipts, then sit dumbfounded as your contractual obligations come to roost, maybe that conversation with your boss should probably be uncomfortable.