Liberals hate "profit takers".
The market will work around this minor "problem". But of course liberals don't have any faith in the market.
I know you're not a liberal since you are on this site. The question is, where did you develop this liberal trait?
I guess I should be insulted.
Notice I said nothing about inhibiting their pursuit of profit. I do believe there are other considerations as important, sometimes even more so.
In this case, I would think that encouraging certain interests - such as in our military hardware, or simply working with their hands instead of playing video games or watching TV - in our kids would be beneficial.
But no, someone saw a chance to make a buck.
The issue is simple: these companies have used the public domain nature of their work as their primary defense against lawsuits for damage caused by their products. I can think of several notorious issues off the top of my head:
In each of these cases, the courts agreed with the contractor's arguments that the product was built for the military, to the military's specifications, and that the proper defendant was the military. This saved the contractors billions of dollars of liability.
Now, they're VOLUNTARILY casting aside that defense. It will be cited in any future cases as "admission against interest," and open the door to any number of lawsuits when someone's house winds up stopping (or at least slowing down) a military aircraft.