Machine Consumption Governance Governing Admissibility Rather Than Capability

Contemporary governance discussions frequently begin with an unnecessarily difficult question: What should machine systems be allowed to do? This framing requires regulators to define machine intelligence, anticipate future capabilities, construct universal behavioral rules, and continually revise those rules as technology changes. The resulting governance burden expands faster than the systems being governed. This paper proposes a narrower approach. Rather than governing machine capabilities, governance should focus on the relationships between resource owners and machine consumers. The central claim is simple: Governance scales best when it regulates the admissibility of machine participation rather than the capabilities of machine systems. Content hosts should retain authority over the conditions under which machine consumers may acquire resources. Machine consumers should possess verifiable identities and operate through explicit permission structures. Central authority should remain limited to identity integrity, enforcement, fraud prevention, and coordination failures. The framework treats governance primarily as a problem of admissibility, accountability, and resource relationships rather than intelligence control.