That is our most popular feature. Realtime news classification. Try typing your city in the http://twecan.com you get news of things that are happenning around you this minute. In the next release we will have heat maps of where things are happening.
Cheers mate, you got ripped off, that's why I embrace open source.
You should only blame yourself though, you could have had a simple crypt on the db, with a key stored inside the binary. At least it would take a bit more work to rip you off.
I would suggest you go ahead and release your database to the public. The one thing you have that they do not is that you still have your scraper script(s). If it was me, I would create a (restful) web service that allows anyone to utilize your data, moreover, allow people (maybe with a nominal fee) to download the entire database, or if you really wanna get into it, implement keys (kinda like google maps) to access you bus timetable api.
A degree in computer science has very little to do with programming. Really the comp sci program is more or less universal all over the world, if you look at it there are really only a handful of courses that directly tech coding. However, there are a good number of courses relating to theory, discrete math, algorithms and complexity, ...
Anybody can learn how to code, but by going through the Bachelors degrees in Maths or Comp Sci you gain the theories behind it. Ofcourse, you might be able to read these books on your own and thus prep yourself for a masters degree. Moreover, if you are not from a CS background the university will force you to take the CS core courses which give you the foundational theoretical knowledge.