From my view content is not something that sellable, if it already published it becomes the public ownership. It could be make money if you are hiring someone to make you a content, or the content itself is promoting a product that will be sold on also on the public, the money is coming from there.
But if you are on several platform like youtube, you could register your license to your content so it will be not able to steal.
There are thousands of books that are published and yet not public domain at all. Writers deal with publishing houses and they end up taking care of all the printing and media and all of that which results with authors making money. Same logic applies here, just because it is online and not on your hands doesn't change it, you could also be an author and your book could be ebook sold online and yet it is still illegal to distribute it.
I am not saying that it is not available, I downloaded games and movies on torrent before, but it just doesn't make the creators stop. Just because we downloaded games and movies online doesn't mean that the industry stopped or crashed, in fact they are making even more money these days in billions. So we should not really be that much shocked about the current situation and we should be focusing on how we can improve it.