Indeed. The solution isn't technical but legal. It's clearly abusive of - really stealing - other people's resources; there's no question about it.

For some reason, like with fraud via email, text, and phone, we don't do anything about it. All this brazen crime and government does nothing; we don't even imagine government doing anything.

The brazen crime of asking for a resource and receiving it.

You have the power, and should exercise it, to rate limit bad actors