The world's topmost universities (e.g. Yale, MIT) publish those same lectures on their own websites along with other course materials. We could demand public universities do the same for all courses. If they weren't part of monopolized platforms already, by now we'd probably have widespread p2p video chat (we already had p2p calling with Skype; we've regressed in that area), and it'd be unmetered just like phone calls. Music, movies, TV could be mostly free if we had retained the original 28 year copyright period, making everything up to 1998 available, or we could even shorten it to 10-15 years.
The things you list are all free or nearly free to run with modern technology. It's not ads that make it possible. Ads enable market capture that prevents other low-cost alternatives from proliferating. They raise costs to society.
The things you list are all free or nearly free to run with modern technology. It's not ads that make it possible. Ads enable market capture that prevents other low-cost alternatives from proliferating. They raise costs to society.