Originally Posted by goober

The history of copyright protection tells us something.
For centuries, the remedy was for the guilty party to turn over all illegal copies and all monies received for illegal copies.
Thus the law would fall heavily on a firm that made 10000 illegal copies of a book, and sold several thousand, they would be out the cost of production, and all proceeds would be forfeited to the rights holder.

Little cases were not pursued because even a favorable judgment would yield little in return.
Early file sharing judgments were limited to the money received, which in most cases was nothing.
Then the industry got congress to pass laws that allowed an implied value to be assigned equal to the full retail price, resulting in things like a multibillion dollar judgment against Napster.

So for centuries, the law had protected rights holders from other people selling the material, not from sharing it.
What we have is that now sharing copyrighted material has been made illegal for the first time.

It's like taking books out of libraries, or making it illegal to lend books, in order to increase the number of people paying for the book.
What's next, outlawing the sale of used books over the internet?

There is a fundamental difference between sharing information, and making physical copies of protected material and selling them. One is commerce, the other is free speech. And despite the law, sharing information is a fundamental human right.

The law cannot change reality, it can only regulate commerce.