Author's analogy (Prop. APIs == Patents) is completely false.
These juridical and technical restrictions and
business dependance [sic] with specific licensing
defined by ToS are a new kind of patent.
I call bullshit! If anything, APIs are protected by copyright law,
which prevents copying.Not to mention that a patent is protected by the state (hint: that's why it's called the United States Patent and Trademark Office), whereas Terms of Service are contracts between private parties that are entered into voluntarily.
The basic right of a patent is that of exclusion -- i.e., excluding others from "practicing" your invention (usually defined as producing, offering for sale, or importing).
However, if you don't like some company's API, there are perfectly legal ways to clone the backend service and construct an API that is basically identical.
If there is a monopoly power on behalf of proprietary APIs, it's created by market inertia and NOT by a state-granted artificial legal monopoly.
I'm getting a little sick of non-lawyers getting away with posting stupid analogies with linkbaity titles. If you want to attack the patent system, fine. But please, for the love of God, do 10 minutes of research first.