Agreed. If the people behind these take-down requests actually ended piracy, they'd be out of a job.
When they are done with open piracy they will move to other stuff.
Did you whistle a copyrighted tune in the elevator? You owe us money now.
(If you think I'm joking, look at Japan who jails musicians for 10+ years for playing covers at parties without paying royalties)
A party large enough is effectively a broadcast/performance.
It's not as cut and dried and greed-filled as all that.
For large acts and musical pieces that have moved into the larger cultural milieu, sure—there's a discussion to be had about the place of the work in that society. (And then maybe the society as a whole should compensate the artist they've so benefited from more directly)
Those licensing and copyright laws were designed to protect journeyman musicians from having their life's work robbed by large publishers and broadcasters and it still serves that purpose.
Imagine proprietary software from your work was lifted and incorporated by a potential client. I'm certain in most cases that would be grounds for litigation in most peoples' minds. (Or, for example Robert Kearns' case)
10 years, not a second more! For all IP .. no exceptions.
People have a lingering hatred on for the RIAA, and maybe rightfully so, from the Napster trials and so on from the early 2000's and I think they let it blind them to the history of music and creators' rights in North America.
The assumption that musicians are all a bunch of greedy sods making it filthy rich, undeservingly, is pretty awful. The reality is they get robbed often.
(And people get all hot under the collar when it comes to licensing of performances and broadcasts because they want to rant about the RIAA, but that's not really their wheelhouse—that's more the domain of organizations like SOCAN, ASCAP, BMI, etc, and they do a lot for artists).
But who am I kidding. It's 2020. Everywhere I look, people want their music, films, and journalism for free while they proceed to whip the creators for whatever faults they find with the creation or research...