There sure is a disconnect going on between how big corporations utilize copyright to their advantage and how regular folks deal with it, rather hamfistedly, as

There sure is a disconnect going on between how big corporations utilize copyright to their advantage and how regular folks deal with it, rather hamfistedly, as in this case. I disagree with your earlier statement that this might be a new way in which the public "thinks about copyright", it is rather the new way in which it is /misunderstood/. So I'd say we shouldn't confuse the mounting ignorance in the general populace (which is, mostly, attributable to just the sheer amount of stuff that is out there - logic usually fails when something gets too big to follow) with an actual shift in consciousness. There is a need to rethink a lot of this, but that shouldn't be about "how do we break the old thing", but about "how do we create a new thing" - and that is where efforts like CC come into play. So I don't really disagree that this is a widespread phenomenon, I'm just saying that it will not be where the change comes from in the future. That is, of course, unless reality is particularly cruel to us.