I certainly share your frustration with the exclusivity (and resulting loss of usefullness) of this part. If it were my company, I'd be selling a cro-moly version that can be welded and brazed with standard processes, and pushing them hard to production frame builders. Unfortunately, they probably have patent protection that will keep affordable tube couplers off the market for many years, despite this being a pretty obvious and easy to pull off design. I thought up the same design before finding it on the internet, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The designer talks on the S&S website about how it worked marvelously their first try.

Based on numerous anecdotes and partially ripped off bikes I've seen, it seems that theft is a function primarily of visible bling, the actual value of the bike. I suspect that a S&S coupled bike that is suitably camoflauged with bad spray paint un-uniformly applied, with midde of the road standard components that are not polished lovingly every morning, locked up properly with a lock that is not too expensive, will pass under the radar of thieves in most situations. Even if the theif knows you put a huffy sticker on a bianchi, the resale value will still be greatly lowered by the ugliness.