I always assumes the core usw case was piracy

This is also true and shockingly difficult to do reliably.

If you have to pay for safe, encrypted DNS, how is that substantially different than using a VPN? Still need an external service.

I'm not sure how this relates to the parent comment, but there are free encrypted DNS services out there, though the same can't be said for encrypted and anonymous ones (which is, frankly, a hard problem to solve, realistically speaking).

With encrypted DNS you're just shifting the burden of data privacy away from the local network to the DNS operator. How you determine which operators to trust will probably vary from person to person.

Anyway, the major difference here would be that a VPN will encrypt all traffic in a tunnel, from your DNS requests to your actual followup web requests. On the flipside, you may use encrypted DNS to look up records for a domain that serves content over an unencrypted connection.

You can use dns over https over tor(dohot)[1]. Safer than a vpn if you dont mind your isp knowing you go to tor. 1.https://github.com/alecmuffett/dohot

I'm constantly amazed VPNs get away with advertising that, more specifically the ones that advertise lower prices for subscriptions/products. I guess Netflix themselves won't really care if you switch regions for different shows and might write off discounted subscriptions as alternative to piracy, but the companies that license content by region don't care?