"I think the issue of pricing is harder than that - damages and the ammount earned don't inherently line up."
If you read again, you'll see I acknowledged that already. It's just that the easiest number to defend as the "damages" is the amount earned. But that number is so low that we're going to be trying to claim numbers literally 3 or 4 orders of magnitude higher. That's going to be much harder. Not necessarily impossible, but much harder.
If I sit at an intersection and record the cars passing and sell it to the municipal government for say $500 and I note 250 cars they didn't lose $2 each. Just because you can make money off of someone else /doesn't/ mean it is exploitation.
Conversely if someone broke a MRI Machine to steal the copper wire and sell it for $5 it doesn't mean the hospital suffered only that much in damages.