That would be nice, but they wouldn't be free. There will be a cost to people not paying for content and that cost would be an erosion of the content.

I don't buy this. Some might just do it for the promise of riches, but I think history has shown that people create great things for other reasons. Also, I have no idea how many times my PDFs have been copied. That says something.

Why create a show like Game of Thrones for many millions of dollars if you cannot see a sizable profit. We may not be at this stage yet but the amount of "piracy" is only increasing.

I honestly don't see that as a real danger. IMO there are probably very reasonable distribution systems between what we have and total piracy that can allow for Game of Thrones.

Interestingly, a new movement in RPGs has been crowdfunding. A pretty well known author Monty Cook decided to start making his own game. He was looking to raise $20k. Regarding musicians, I could imagine a band that tours, builds a following, and releases each album as a kickstarter, sending copies and shwag to the funders of each round.