Actually, a lot of companies use Shodan data for research! For example, if you want a training set for your new webapp fingerprinting software then loading Shodan might be a good start. Or if you want to create whitepapers for your business, to drive sales for a specific product/ service, then Shodan can provide some empirical data to back up your claims. As was demonstrated with the Internet Census 2012, for people with bad intentions it's easier and much less attention-getting to just use a botnet (plus you don't need to go through the typical business agreements as you would with me). I hope that clarifies it a bit!