[sfink]

> they failed to address that these labs are creating a public good as well. Who's to say that this "theft" is larger than the production of public goods that these labs give to the public in the first place.

Those aren't public goods, they're private goods. The difference is already apparent, and will become more so over time. But yes, they are "goods"; they have a lot of value.

I'm less interested in punishing the past theft that enabled these goods, and more worried about the ongoing damage they are doing to the ecosystem that birthed them. Good artists copy, great artists steal, but if a community is wholly dominated by these "great artists" then it will not survive as a community and will cease to produce anything worth copying let alone stealing.