We’re about the same age, probably. On this side of the pond, all of this stuff was rooted in inability to get something legally first, and if it was possible to get, it was prohibitively expensive to buy for us. So we got it for “free”. The thing is we were not using the software to earn money, so companies don’t care (this what I heard from a couple of companies directly). Music was in a similar position.

It was a righteous moral stand because we wanted to get things relatively affordable for us.

I for one prefer to buy my software and music nowadays, because it’s affordable and I can get it at the quality I want.

For your other question, the answer is probably 1800s, because the current model was not entrenched everywhere and creators had sane rights for what they created. So creators had to get what they made out to masses to show it, but lost their rights in relatively shorter times, so things were free to use for everyone. So you can’t excessively milk something till proverbial eternity.