Since accusations of "shilling" have been made anyway, check this out: Remember when the Judge made his "Name Your Shills" order in Oracle v Google? Guess what! The author of TFA was named in Google's list of shills! I guess that makes him a legally certified shill! And since you're so quick to support the author's viewpoint...
To be fair, I don't think the author's a shill. But I've been following him since he wrote for Ars (and he's also on HN sometimes), so I can tell he certainly has drunk some Kool-aid, and it has a slight Google flavor. He interned there after all, so that may explain why Microsoft was highlighted in the headlines.
But notably, he also is (or was) a "scholar" at the Cato Institute, which believes in "limited government and free markets" and seems to have anti-IP leanings. Unsurprisingly the author's articles (even this one!) often uncritically cite the works published by academics like James Bessen, which like to paint a "sky is falling" situation with respect to US IP policies, even though these works have time and again been strongly called into question by other academics. Given that he's a scholar himself, I'd be surprised if he's unaware of that, but his articles only ever present one side.
So the Kool-aid may have other, stronger flavors as well, but he's definitely drunk some.
To be fair, I don't think the author's a shill. But I've been following him since he wrote for Ars (and he's also on HN sometimes), so I can tell he certainly has drunk some Kool-aid, and it has a slight Google flavor. He interned there after all, so that may explain why Microsoft was highlighted in the headlines.
But notably, he also is (or was) a "scholar" at the Cato Institute, which believes in "limited government and free markets" and seems to have anti-IP leanings. Unsurprisingly the author's articles (even this one!) often uncritically cite the works published by academics like James Bessen, which like to paint a "sky is falling" situation with respect to US IP policies, even though these works have time and again been strongly called into question by other academics. Given that he's a scholar himself, I'd be surprised if he's unaware of that, but his articles only ever present one side.
So the Kool-aid may have other, stronger flavors as well, but he's definitely drunk some.