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Personally, if I had to pay, I'd so much rather pay per view.

Subscriptions just tend to pile up and many of them sitting idle for long periods of time. I would love pay-per-view for streaming services as well, instead of having Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Prime/etc subscriptions (as opposed to juggling between them, or choosing just one to stick with). Same with VPN that I use very sporadically, it feels stupid to pay a monthly fee for something I use maybe an hour per month on average.

“Why dont you just pay the ransom, it's not even that expensive”.

Agreed. If you hate ads and are given a reasonably priced option of not seeing them, you should choose that option. To support that option and signal that people want that option.

until they raise it.

Or add ads to it (most likely a mix of both: raise price and offer a version with ads that's at the former price, which is what Netflix did if you factor in their policy change on account sharing)