USGS considering move towards charging for Landsat imagery again

I read about this recently but it popped up again on my twitter feed this morning - the USGS (of Landsat fame) are considering reinstating charges for Landsat imagery. For those of you more familiar with the Copernicus (ESA) era of earth observation satellites, NASA/USGS were the founders of the free earth observation data model. Three or four years after I finished undergrad they made all the data from Landsat 5 and 7 available to users - free of charge. Suddenly this treasure-trove of free, 30m pixel size multispectral data (updated every 12 days or so) appeared and the number of users (myself included) skyrocketed. See the graph below showing number of publications using Landsat imagery after the 2008 switch in policy - that's almost exponential growth, if you are looking for an indicator to show a policy works then that what more could you ask.

So, "More users?" I hear you say, "So what - USGS/NASA/USA are losing out financially right?" Right in a way - but very wrong in another - all of the users are people using Landsat data to improve crop health, increase forestry yields, manage the ocean and coastal resources, mitigate natural disasters or private sector looking to sell services, develop apps, start companies - this all returns massive rewards to the national accounts, not just one publicly funded body. They definitely aren't all in the US - but a paper that is written by authors in India for example and publishes a useful case study - can that not help a US company?

Spatial data provides massive value to any economy - just look at the value that was placed on geospatial data in Ireland a few years back by an ESRI/OSi study. Even as a small nation the direct value was measured at around €120m and additional benefits through time savings etc of around €279million.

So I don't know where this decision is coming from - although I can guess...and considering the fact Copernicus is here now with more, better satellites - what are they hoping to happen? Is Landsat 9 going to be that much of a game changer? Off the top of my head the only things Landsat 8 has that the Sentinels don't is a high resolution coastal blue band and a high resolution thermal. So they will charge for the data, when it is in less demand?