This is pretty lackluster reasoning, it would follow that since Benjamin Franklin was the discoverer of electricity and DARPA Net came from that so....
Taxpayer funding has no bearing on the commercialization of products down the road. It is not a special case of intellectual property...
I'll return the favor and consider your reply as a strawman. But even then, let's compare Ben Franklin's capital outlay vs the Federal government's in DARPA.
Issue is not IP. Did I mention IP? There are extant congressional records of discussions in Congress regarding gifting this technology to "business" in service of the American public (one presumes). There is an implicit social contract at work here.
DARPAnet is as far from
Twitter as the Wright Brothers Flyer is from a 747. There is no implicit social or legal contract. A gift is well a gift. No backsies.
Taxpayer funding has no bearing on the commercialization of products down the road. It is not a special case of intellectual property...