A video editing software rant

Years ago I was into editing all sorts of stuff as a hobby.
I wasn't going to make anything for commercial use or try profit from my content,
and I didn't have the extra 600-800 to invest, so I pirated Sony Vegas Pro.

I loved editing with it, it was so intuitive and easy to use.
I would have paid the full price if I could have afforded it
and was using it for professional use, no doubt.

Then my PSU fried the motherboard and HDD, all was lost.
I also felt like the pirated version might have been dirty, a lot of weird shit happened over the years I used it, but nothing serious.

After that I haven't been back to editing anything on my new rig.
I want to, but there simply isn't anything good enough for me, for free, or even at a affordable price,
considering I wouldn't do more than some small project once a month or less frequently.
It's just too much money for such a hobby.

The thing that bothers me is this:

Why is good video editing and recording software still not free?

One would think that such software would be already integrated into every day technology.
Imagine 20 years ago when cellphones went viral, if someone said you'd have to pay for and get additional, seperate programs and services to make or receive calls. Ludacris.
You buy the phone (hardware) and pay a provider of your choice to deal with the software.

Internet browsers are free.
Video players are free.
Creating still images that we create or find online to share is free.
So what's the big deal in making video software so expensive and hard to get?

You guessed it: Hollywood.
Still images are great. Let the communities, consumers and fans create their own stuff,
it's all free promotion for movies. They still want to pay to see the movies.
But if everyone would have top notch, efficient, easy to use, practical recording and editing tools at home on their PC, or god forbid on small portable devices in a theater; Aaw heeeeell no!

Digital images, static or live video, are the pen and paper of today.
I'm pretty sure in saying, without doing any research, that nobody had a monopoly or patent on pen and paper 200 years ago, back when those two where the best we had in communication technology.

Pinnacle Studio can be bought for $60, and Sony Vegas Pro for $560.
I don't even want to know how big a difference there is between those two, there has to be something seriously lacking in Pinnacle, or then it's just a semi-trial?

I hope things change soon and this software becomes more available to everyone.
And yes, even if I was a millionaire, I would still stand behind this rant.
It's not about me being temporarily biased, this is just wrong.

Origins of this rant:

A funny glitch happened on my ranger while leap slamming with a staff.
I wanted to record it and edit it with a small fade in/out and music,
and after giving a free program a long hour of reading its guides and learning its retarded user interface and controls, I finally got to export my 20sec video which... surprise, had a gigantic FUCK YOU watermark in my face.

All I wanted was to quickly throw together 20 sec of video + music, and they make it soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
fuckiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing
haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.

That's what's pissing me off.

Did you tried Linux?
This is where most free stuff anyway.

It's not free software (as in open source) but Lightworks is a free downloadable NLE. A few caveats, the interface is different from most competitors (it seems to be designed around replicating an actual film cutting table) and they limit the codecs you can use for output with the free version. I've found it to be a fine editor once I got the hang of the interface.