"Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us."Exactly, if we held public demonstrations outside the offices of book publishers, Sony, RIAA, and similar greedy bastards, and it became the norm to snub our noses at their employees then things would soon change.
For instance, we ought to be demonstrating in the streets over how these bastards are hounding the Internet Archive, but we're not.
If we were, then these companies would quickly change their tune and think twice before launching such lawsuits.
Trouble is we're not out there demonstrating. And it's only a tiny minority of the population who actually care about such things—those of us posting here on HN etc.—who do. We're such a small force we couldn't escape from a wet paper bag on the deck of a sinking ship let alone take on the might of these greedy corporations.
Cory Doctorow has said this many times although he's not been as blunt about it as I am. I've followed this for decades and I reckon it's essentially a lost cause.
Even if we could get politicians to agree to change laws they could only do so around the edges as they've signed international treaties, Berne, WIPO, etc. which prohibit signatories from exiting. Any country that left the treaties would have sanctions placed against it.
These corporations have not only won but they've implemented a system that's irreversible, like a ratchet, every one of their cog-like actions squeezes us consumers further and there's fuck-all we can do about it.