Of course, but that wasn’t the context. Individual JPGs, PDFs in an article are very different than 1 gigabyte video. I would hide the latter behind the Downloads app, which can prevent public download links.
There are also not just bandwidth concerns. If someone hot-links some files from my article, at least I stay in control of that actual file and can remove it or change it again in the future. If I prevent linking, they might download the files and upload them to their own server, removing my control over the file entirely. That could be worse. There are many considerations … That’s why I asked so many questions.
Caching images and other resources is actually part of the free plan as well.