I only use free VPN extensions or apps and I fully aware of the limitation of this. I use shabby ones, which don’t protect and probably sell my data. It slow and I can’t have only a few location. But I can’t get around the idea that people can pay for a service to refuse to pay to a service. Please help me understand.
I mean, if you assume that the only reason people are pirates is because they refuse to pay anyone for a service then I could see why you would have trouble with this point. But that isn’t why most people pirate. Most people pirate because they don’t want to pay the extortionate prices that media companies demand for their IP. Spending some small yearly fee to avoid paying several much large fees looks like a pretty solid reason for paying for a VPN service.
I would add that the original understanding for cable tv and every service since was you pay a set fee and get some specialized content along with specialized content others would be interested in and the $$ is pooled to allow this. These companies keep subdividing services and subscriptions and thereby charging specifically for the specialized content. They broke our contract when they did this.
Along with the crazy prices, there is the simplicity. No need to figure out what is streaming where. Just open plex/jellyfin and watch.