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Agreed. I think a better analogy would be comparing this situation to being a squatter and seeing a real estate agent sign in the yard of the house you've been squatting in. You realize that you only have a short amount of time to leech off the work of others before it is cut off.

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>leech off the work of others

That's an unfair assessment. In same cases perhaps, but the core issues is that Twitter et al offer certain types of access and then revoke it. If this developer had reverse-engineered their API and they closed the loophole, leeching would be a more relevant term.

Twitter is a private service. You use it at their pleasure.

Except you weren't squatting because you were originally invited in (to use the API).

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