I don't think your belief in a free internet changes whether its ethical. Ethical or not, I think bypassing paywalls is a useful societal function because it h

I don't think your belief in a free internet changes whether its ethical. Ethical or not, I think bypassing paywalls is a useful societal function because it help so signal to providers that their value proposition is out of whack. What's behind most paywalls is worth literally $0 to me, so the only way I would ever see it is to bypass the paywall. I used to read the print copy of the economist, not because I couldn't access the articles for free but because it gave me a periodical with curatee articles I could sit and read (when covid started and that's all they could talk about, i cancelled my subscription, I don't need to pay for covid news). I subscribe to spotify, but because I couldn't find the songs for free but because it's more convenient and gives them to me anywhere at a reasonable cost. In the case of streaming services, there's an argument that they wouldn't exist if not for Napster et al and that companies would continue to try and rent seek by controlling distribution of content in a way that didn't satisfy consumer needs. The same is true for paywalls - bypassing them is an important forcing function towards a viable business model that delivers content in a way we want.