It's not a question of being owed free content, it's a question of being able to access the content without being inundated with ads blocking the content from every direction. I give money to the content creators that matter to me (e.g., the very local newspaper, NPR, a few podcasts), but I remember the shock of seeing what life was like with a vanilla IE install on Windows with a work computer. After going to the website of the auto dealership to make a service appointment, I got continual ads for Chrysler automobiles (which means that for all the tracking the advertisers got negative value because I wasn't looking to buy).