Exactly. Free is on the competitive battlefield with paid, just as nonmonitized (open source, volunteer and nonprofits) can be competitive to monetized endeavors. It's a continuum along the axis of price, which does not necessarily have to be a positive number.

Content distributors are at liberty to uniquely watermark all content and hunt down every last pirate with massive penalties AND/OR threaten to stop producing content, if they so choose. Content viewers can also make choices, one of which could be to organize collective negotiation.