This a a very different situation. Stores are selling products or services, and they explicitly put prices on the products.

Content available freely online is much different, as there is no price and at best the hope is that the consumer sees an ad or sponsorship and that the content creator has accurate analytics as to how many saw the ads.

Your analogy would be more akin to someone stealing access to paywalled content somehow. In that case a price was put on the content and someone took if anyway, much like shoplifting.