I think the difference is that the companies are dumping billions of dollars into transforming that data into something useful, so they would like a return on their profits. Opening up the models for free is not a good business model if you want to make money.
I think the difference is that people are investing significant amounts of time, effort, and money into transforming their work into something useful, so naturally they would like some return on that investment. Giving away that work for free is not a particularly good business model if those people expect to be compensated for the value they create.
There’s too many implicit assumptions in that sentence that run afoul of the conversation.
Just spending money doesn’t mean it’s legal, for example. Criminals expect RoI too.