Wow, that was quite the article! The author sounded a little mad (or maybe just passionate), but I think I get the gist of what they are saying.
Personally I’m someone that, though I spends hours on the internet each day I much prefer books, and DVDs, over scanlations or downloads. I have only used either in rare instances when someone suggested I just ‘had to see’ something. I can’t say that I feel all that comfortable about it when I do it. I mean the artist goes though a lot of work and then to have someone take it without paying would be beyond frustrating.
That said I believe that the internet is being greatly underused. I do use the internet a lot to help me select the items I buy and what I should be looking for. Previewing what is out there or coming out soon, and such is invaluable to me in helping find what I want. I think that just cracking down on illegal sites will just make them go underground and harder to find and fight. Give people an official source (a good one!) and I believe that most people will go there. Sorry to say, many people are short on time (or just lazy 
) and large centralized sites will be easier.
As the article pointed out, I believe the industry is being rather short sighted in it’s acceptance of the new technologies out there. The internet isn’t going anywhere any time soon. There are so many ways they could benefit from it to better find out what people want, introduce them to new things, and such. There will always be people who try to get things for nothing, but most willing pay if given a reasonable way that gets them what they want.
Mostly passionate, I think. While he posts reviews of chapters or episodes coming out in scanlation/fansub format, he'll later post reviews of the latest volume or DVD he's bought of the same series.
(I'm a strange animal on this score, myself. I like to watch or read series in progress, but will usually buy completed sets I loved. Even then, though, I'll frequently go to lower-grade online sources when discussing or revisiting old favorites because it makes it easier to find a particular scene or point out that scene to others without making them look for nonexistent page numbers or difficult-to-skip-to time frames. And I often keep fansubs/scanlations of some series I've bought because they're more compact, more portable, or have better translation quality.)
You have it nailed as far as previewing... with the virtual disappearance of brick-and-mortar anime rental, people who aren't affiliated with anime clubs are stuck with either Netflix (which is really good, but not always reliable for older or smaller titles) or going to the Internet. Take away the Internet, and people will stop buying because they're not going to blow $20 on one disc of a series, or $50-100 on the whole set, without knowing that it's good. (Or at least, without knowing it's not crap.)
The problem is in some ways better, some ways worse, for manga. Barnes and Noble and other retailers offer a good way to preview manga, but their heyday in the market seems to have passed. If it's not InuYasha or Naruto, good luck finding a copy. There's no Netflix-like business for manga, quite understandably given the much higher postage rates. And I would be surprised if more than 1 in 10 public libraries outside the Pacific NW even knows what a manga is, much less having the funds to buy any.
For anime, there are innovators out there in terms of online presentation, such as Funimation or Crunchyroll. But there's almost nothing for manga. By declaring war without offering an alternative, the publishers have set up a contest of wills that almost ensures they'll lose. Ask any parent of a toddler how well it works to take away a favorite toy and say "No! Bad!" without offering something else as an alternative. Now give the toddler the resources and willpower of a teenager or adult and band a bunch of them together into a community, and see how well that works.
