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Copyright is necessary *to keep corporations from ripping off creators.* Not to keep the public/consumers from sharing works.
Copyright prevents Disney from grabbing the newest independent film and releasing it in theatres of their choice, for their profit. Copyright prevents Random House from grabbing MoeJoe's stories from feedbooks and publishing them. (And from collecting MobileRead discussion threads into a book and selling it.) Copyright prevents EMI from grabbing some garage band's new, trendy sound, pressing some CDs, & selling 10,000 copies without telling the band. (Or, well, it's supposed to, "pending list" notwithstanding.)
The reason copyright infringement's penalties are so ridiculously huge is that they're aimed at companies, not individuals.
Copyright was never intended to prevent a person from writing down the lyrics to a song she likes, and sending them in a letter to a friend. Changing the tech for that from "ink and paper" to "my blog post" doesn't change the utter lunacy of attempting to prosecute individuals for non-commercial use of IP.
The reason we're so gleeful about these record companies being targeted by copyright law, is that this is what the law is supposed to do. There isn't any defense, here, of "I'm not costing the artist anything" or "I'm not doing this for personal gain" or "I was just sharing what I love with my friends." What these record companies are doing--sell stuff now, pay artists "when we get around to it," or never--is *exactly* what copyright law was created to prevent.
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