Free riders send a market signal of failure or they cause friction. In the former, the service or creator just shuts down and moves on to something else. In the latter the service must make a choice with very little knowledge.. what should they do? Bake ads into the content? Ad block wall? Subscription? Pay per view?

Basically it doesn't make any meaningful progress towards a better outcome. It just temporarily makes the content more enjoyable to you at the expense of the person who created it and maybe to you if you enjoyed it and wanted more.