I have no previous knowledge of James Boyle, but the blurb at the bottom of the article says:

The writer is professor of law at Duke Law School, a co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain and a board member of Creative Commons

I get the impression that the author is trying to sow little seeds of thinking differently about intellectual property among readers of Financial Times, without having them dismiss him as a raving commie lunatic.

(Personally I think the GNU General Public License is even better than sliced bread.)