Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

But I can't get around the idea that people can pay for a service to refuse to pay to a service.

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.

You can ask the same thing at the internet level. Why are people paying for internet service when they could go to the public library and get free Wi-Fi.

Internet service VPNs are foundational networking. You need them to do anything else.

VPN isn't specifically for pirating, personally I could even torrent without it, no one would give a crap; my situation aside, you can DDL without a VPN and you'd still be in the clear