The grounding in the USA's federal constitution allows copyright but for a very well-defined purpose, increasing the size of the public domain. How much material went into the USA's public domain on January 1st, 2012? Answer: none. Current copyright law in the USA has slipped it's mooring, and become something other than a limited monopoly to encourage creation.
As far as implementing and enforcing copyright to suppress expressions, check out The Air Pirates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Pirates). Arguably, the lawsuit is all about Disney using copyright law to suppress something that was valid free speech.
About (2):
I don't see your point at all, unless you're strictly hanging on "hyper-connectedness". The internet works by copying into caches or buffers: it's one giant technical infringement. Without stricter-than-SOPA laws (see Fritz Holling's 2002 effort: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-866337.html) "copyright" per se is probably un-enforceable without a radical overhaul of the current peer-to-peer internet, and all the associated electronics.