They do have a subscription for the “drive recorder” camera but you can pay a one time fee to permanently unlock it so that’s at least acceptable.

Edit: incidentally the permanent price is the same as if you bought it on your car new.

I disagree: if the physical hardware came on the car, the owner is entitled to use it (that's how property rights work). Therefore, BMW should be forced to either charge everybody for it as a standard feature or physically not include the hardware for the people who aren't getting it.

Hardware that's artificially locked behind DRM -- which is what being "activatable" by even a one-time fee after the fact really is -- is a direct attack on property rights and therefore entirely unacceptable!