There is a difference in works published by a federal government agency itself and works published by a scientist funded by a government grant who works for an institution of higher learning but not an employee of the federal government. Only works produced directly by agencies and employees of the federal government go into the public domain. The vast majority of research is not conducted by federal employees, but contractors (grantees). However, Congress has passed a law requiring work funded by federal grants to be "open access". Open access is not exactly the same thing as public domain.
The content producers are not thieves. The content producers are the scientists that publish the research, and their peers that peer review the research articles for free. The thieves are the ones whose job it is to provide the research and make it available to the community -- the "middle men". What they are doing is pretty much the textbook definition of extortion.
That's actually pretty trivial to do, and doesn't involve any complicated hacking beyond social engineering. You have somebody create a fake account on FB posing as a student, and monitoring the official FB groups. When they see a bunch of students creating a private group and attracting people to it, they ask to join the group. And the student admins of the group think they're one of them and let them in. Most high school students a pretty nieve and think think that what they post is pretty harmless and won't be detected by "authorities", when in fact, those that need or want to know already know everything they need to know. Remember, people that work for Harvard are, by definition, already smarter than students that have not attended Harvard in the first place. That's why they are paid to educate them.
Is this true?
Yes. This man, has no dick.
Let's just say that this proves that reviewer 2 actually is a bitch.
"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger