I don't understand the "theft" or "stealing" angle here, other than as a clumsy rhetorical device. I can see an "unfair" angle, and the behavior is definitely bad for customers, but it's not theft. Theft and stealing are when someone unlawfully[1] takes something that belongs to you. But here, it's never established that whatever was taken ever belonged to either the consumer or the maker in the first place.

[1] The author tries to escape this requirement by calling it "legal theft" but that's an oxymoron.