But why would one trust a VPN more than an ISP? The article says "while making sure that nobody can see what you’re downloading," but that's clearly not true: they can.
Now you get a nice offer from some men in fancy suits who represent some company that has some link to the MPAA/RIAA/whoever. They offer to help subsidise your server costs and in return they get access to your log files. Now maybe this country does not have such privacy laws as other places, so you aren't compelled to tell your customers about this change.
The new subsidies however do allow you to lower your prices to a level where you start getting a huge chunk of the business.