With all its problems, however, the answer is not to violate copyright law, but instead to get involved in reforming copyright legislation through law-abiding acts. There are lots of ways to do that.
Here are two big ones: (1) get yourself an intellectual property attorney's education in copyright law for free from Harvard Law School's CopyrightX MOOC at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/CopyrightX_Homep... and (2) follow the StackExchange community proposal called CopyrightX at http://goo.gl/5YDHa where if enough people get involved by asking good questions and researching the answers, we can raise global awareness about exactly what ways copyright laws are now working against their original goals. In Everything Is A Remix, Kirby Ferguson's closing words were: "The common good is a meme that was overwhelmed by intellectual property. It needs to spread again. If the meme prospers, our laws, our norms, our society, they all transform. That's social evolution and it's not up to governments or corporations or lawyers… it's up to us."
But it's up to us to do this in a manner that respects and honors existing law.
Different from Syria, people are not being killed by the thousands in the Copyright Wars, so civil disobedience is not the best way to fight back against the institutions that currently control copyright laws.
The best way to fight back is to educate ourselves and others so that the common good returns to the forefront of copyright law in the minds of everyone affected by copyright law. When enough people are aware of what copyright law was originally intended to accomplish, then the laws will necessarily change in the truly democratic nations.
Learn more at http://copyrightx.org and http://copyrightactof1790.wordpress.com and by following me on Twitter https://twitter.com/StackCopyrightX and there is a TED conversation at http://www.ted.com/conversations/17388/imagine_a_charter_nat... too.
