To me, “Max” means the highest tier of the product they’re currently offering to that customer segment, not an unlimited claim on everything the company possesses.

Again, for me this has just been a very strange argument I keep seeing around these plans. It’s obvious the plans are subsidized and I am happy to take advantage of that in the near term but I would be a fool to think my $200/month account buys any special access.

That's a little snarkier than strictly appropriate in this forum but you cannot seriously and in good faith say that this is the first time you've seen advertisements 'exagerrate' the truth.

Note I don’t particularly like the ‘stolen’ word here as I don’t like when the music and film companies use it in the same context. Copyright infringement? Sure. Theft? No.

This was a problem for 5+ years ago. Nobody cares or at least the majority voice does not care across the world. Cat is out of the bag and there is no way to put it back in.

EDIT: Worth noting that I have long held the belief that if you put data out on the public sidewalk that you should have low to no expectation that it’s IP. It’s how I think about Google Maps data for example. If they want to reap the benefits by not walking it off the a user login than they can feel the pain if folks use that information. Same applies for media that has been bought, Reddit comments or any other datasets.