Implementation detail. What matters is the UX: think of a song, search for it, there it is on YouTube. Open the link and it plays. No payment needed, for a long time not even an account. The platform itself was pretty inobtrusive for most of its lifetime; it's gotten quite bad recently, but for most of those who care enough to do something about it, uBlock Origin clears out the UX of all the bullshit.

Pirates couldn't possibly beat that if they tried. But it only exists because of an accident of history: YouTube got big on pirated content early enough and fast enough they could transition to "content id" instead of getting sued to oblivion.