Most of the problems I'm seeing outlined above are a byproduct of the industry's tendacy toward wanting to take shortcuts and get rich quick.
Very very few people treat their users as customers. Instead they use deception and every trick they can think of to force them to where they want them to be and in many cases charge them for things they never asked to buy.
As surfers have gotten smarter, and billing has gotten more restrictive, margins have shrunk. The result for many companies is desperation and pushing the envelope even harder. We cling to the model of $35 PPS for affiliates even though a signup is worth maybe a third of that these days. No one will back off on the price because they'll lose that traffic to the guy who says he still pays it....even though he's really shaving everyone raw.
Trying to compare what TGPs are doing to giving away free cars doesn't fly. Stick with media comparisons. It's really more like television. You get plenty of free channels loaded with great programming, but you have to put up with commercials.
Do advertisers bitch at the networks if their commercials aren't working? No, the only thing they care about is how many people see 'em. Making the commercial effective and having the product sell is the advertiser's problem. Nor is the answer trying to have certain channels on the dish or cable box that when you tune into them suddenly break your receiver so it only goes to channels owned by that advertiser.
There's gotta be an attitude shift as much as anything before things get better. Now please do go ahead and tell me I'm stupid for not making tens of millions fleecing surfers 5 years ago...
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