Charging for digital content is (or at least should be) about recouping the cost it took to make it, not the (near-zero) cost to distribute it.

And at scale, the cost ceases to be remotely near zero. Netflix would implode rapidly without income even if they stopped producing content.

Netflix never would have existed to begin with in a world without DRM-loaded media.

(The streaming platform, that is, not the original movies-in-your-mailbox service)

> remotely near zero

That sounds like an oxymoron ;), had to take a double-take when reading.

There are other methods to recoup the cost that actually hand something of tangible value to the customer (the physical mediums I mentioned, for example.) Handing over a digital asset for the same price, and then lambasting those who choose to distribute it freely, is 100% the shittiest way to do it.

It's pretty obvious that media companies are not ok with simply recouping cost plus a reasonable margin but instead all try for a recurring income stream with little recurrent effort to earn it. No amount of profit is enough if more can be had and with the current copyright regime they can legally get away with it too. Plenty of old games are still sold at prices way above zero even when the companies that originally made them have long since stopped existing. So no, digital content is not priced around recouping costs but around maximising profit.

And going back to the original topic, a lot of advertising infested sites on the web still have their content created for free by users and those profiting from the advertisement are merely the middlemen that handle the distribution.