Must I buy the product at Costco after I’ve tasted the sample or am I just a freeloader?
Am I morally obliged to acknowledge the sponsors for everything I personally don’t purchase?
To whom do I owe patronage when I accept something gratis?
Am I morally obliged to acknowledge the sponsors for everything I personally don’t purchase?
To whom do I owe patronage when I accept something gratis?
No, because the owner of that property has set terms allowing that. Try to eat a dozen samples, though, and they’ll probably ask you to leave.
This isn’t actually a complicated concept: their property, their rules. If you don’t like YouTube, that’s totally reasonable – I don’t – but no amount of sophistry will create a right for you to use their private property on your terms. Just go somewhere else: there are tons of creators who’d love a better deal than Google/Facebook offer them but that’s never going to happen as long as people insist on paying them through YouTube.
I’m impressed you saw what should really happen at Costco, but disappointed you could not extrapolate that thinking to the YouTube case.