The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.
And your are misunderstanding even more basic economics: being able to take something (or a copy of it) without paying, doesn't mean it doesn't have value either.
Value is where there are people willing to pay.
And people ARE willing to pay for music and movies.
So, the problem is not that the content has no value, but rather that the payment step can be bypassed very easily.
But bypassing payment easily != the thing has no value.
Market value is determined by scarcity and demand, right? Scarcity is finished for digital items.
No, just demand.
You can simulate scarcity with access provision. Else you don't get to have an economy in the digital age.
People talk like this is something new, but it's not. Sun Records made Elvis's singles. Nothing even in that analog era prevented ANY OTHER COMPANY to reproduce and sell the same singles and not give Elvis a penny. Nothing, that is, except the copyright law.
This also holds for software licenses. If digital copying means "forget about copyright law" (a prerequisite to declare that "scarcity is finished") then why should anyone respect the GPL license any more than Metallica's copyright?
You can't simulate scarcity with access provision. We've solved that. We wouldn't be having this same stupid tired runaround if access provision worked or could be made to work without being repugnant.
As for the Elvis singles, those were physical goods, housed in physical places, with physical companies. This is vastly different from people giving away byte patterns to one another--and the sooner this is accepted, the sooner we can all productively talk about it.
As for your GPL license...
I'm willing to wager that, shock, there are a lot of companies that use in-house tools having modified GPL source without publishing their changes. I'm willing to wager even more that in developing nations there are lots of IP violations of that nature occurring.
GPL restrictions don't come into play until the point of redistribution. That is at least true for GPLv2, and I'm pretty sure for v3, but I don't know it at all.
In short, I can modify the GPL source of an application all I like if it's an "in-house tool", and I am not required to resubmit my changes. It's only if I attempt to sell it or redistribute the application in some way that I am required to.
We don't get to have an economy based on paying per copy in the digital age. Ransom and work for hire are unaffected, because nobody can copy work that hasn't yet been created or released. This is a good thing; rationing copies has been reducing every work's overall use value for society.
And your are misunderstanding even more basic economics: being able to take something (or a copy of it) without paying, doesn't mean it doesn't have value either.
Value is where there are people willing to pay.
And people ARE willing to pay for music and movies.
So, the problem is not that the content has no value, but rather that the payment step can be bypassed very easily.
But bypassing payment easily != the thing has no value.