One of my yardsticks is that when the Economist supports something, it's clear that those that claim that it would be "bad for business/bad for the market" are no longer to be believed.
That's how changes to the world normally occur: not through a revolutionary minority, but through the development of a consensus which serves as a suitable powder keg. Look at British and French SF from the twenty years before WWI, for example.
What's the basis for that belief?
Surely it's not "biz survived" because biz can survive things that are bad for them.
Also, the flourishing of other biz doesn't imply that some biz wasn't hurt.
For example, criminalization of morphine (early last century in the US) hurt legal drug retailers.