We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art, gave up our right to "repeat what we heard" (copying, when what you hear is digital) in return for incentives to create art.
And then bam; decades later the incentives are the de facto baseline, and have been extended with almost no public awareness (let alone debate) using the special interest money that our goodwill created for them.
It is the ultimate checkmate of democracy, and if it weren't so unjust, you would have to hand it to the media industries for playing so masterfully.
Well, good job. You got us. You took the rules we made, and took the public (US, but even more abroad, by exporting your draconian laws via more special interest money) and absolutely destroyed us. You won. Game over.
But wait... not quite. The game is politics. And if you had been content to simply swim in your unimaginable Scrooge McDuck pool of gold dubloons, you would swim until the end of time. But the public is finally starting to notice, and the technorati whose careers and employers (like Google) depend on having a level playing field (even though they try to tilt it in their favor when they can) are starting to notice. I'm not so optimistic that change will come, but if it does, my vote will be for whatever is closest to "burn the fucker to the ground". And some other people feel the same way.
What's the possible consequence of such an extreme change? I guess the risk of fewer Taylor Swifts. Fewer Kany Wests. Fewer Oracles. Fewer Microsofts. Fewer Steve Jobs. Those are such small consequences that, to be honest, they might be additional benefits.
It would be best if the copyright system were reduced to a smouldering ruin, so that the public could better understand exactly what we gave up when the copyright regime was created, and make a more informed decision about which incentives really are needed to make innovation happen. Until we do, the special interests created by those very laws will continue to make us pay for the favor we gave them.