The point is that if an ad hoc distributed network of unfunded peers can do it, the barrier to entry is not that high for any well funded major enterprise which wants a slice of the pie.

Basically I'd be curious to know if they felt internally that they'd transition to a service provider or something if they had to.

The plethora of streaming services suggest you’re correct in the barrier not being that high.

On other hand you needed VPN to get interesting content... So quite a wash, I don't know where they are now with geoblocking.

That's not a technology moat, that's a copyright moat.