Corps figured out sustained income was better than marketing and making products. All they had to do was take away every digital product and turn it into a subscription.
Then they’ll buy each other up until they are an effective monopoly and raise prices forever.
I don’t see a way out of this for products already captured if you need them.
Remember the “Cable Wars” of yore (the 90’s)? Guess who’s back… back again?
Problem is, they should realise this only creates a gap for a competitor or even worse (from the companies’ perspective) a viable open source project that they’ll never be able to compete on price with.
Their solution is to buy them in most cases. It’s gets hard to turn down $100M.