"Robbing The Commons"
Well, certainly that may be how this fictional story characterises it, however that's a rather disingenuous jab at the principle of open access to knowledge, since real world movements that advocate such freedom (e.g. the Free Software Foundation) are quite clearly talking about that which is published, not that which is private.
Anything which is not published has no bearing on The Commons, since it was never public knowledge to begin with, and you can't really claim to be limited by a lack of access to something you don't even know exists (even if such information might actually turn out to be useful).
The true essence of open access to knowledge is (literally) academic. It's about collaboration, scientific progress and education, not freeloading, spying and spamvertising.
Naturally the monopolistic "IP" fraternity may see things differently, since their objective is greed, not progress.