Probably never, and that's fine. At least not until the avalanche of inevitability gets rolling and then it doesn't matter, and that's fine too. That's just how real social change happens. First you get the majority on board, then the rest is just bookkeeping.
Nobody "as a community" stopped "cheekily tolerating" casual cannabis use and "finally stood up", but tolerance got so ubiquitous that suddenly the "squares" were out of touch and suddenly has to "stand up" for what was already the law -- not the other way around.
I'm pretty sure "cheekily tolerating" homosexuality also cumulatively did more for gay rights than "standing up" did.
Governments change laws when there is political capital in it.
The problem with copyright is that it relies on artists being paid after the fact for their work, which is now impossible to enforce.
But if most artists are being paid up front for their work, they'll have much less incentive to care about copyright. Indeed, many will actively encourage it to create buzz for their next project.
If they also passed a law mandating software to be delivered with source code I suppose RMS wouldn't mind :)
That's a huge issue that you're just sweeping under the rug.
Behind all creative material is someone's time, which is the most valuable thing any of us have.
Regardless of accuracy, just look at how many creatives are apt to blame piracy for the various media industry declines.
So yes, the question of how a creative type can make a living without an IP framework is huge in these sorts of discussions.
The GPL depends on copyright to protect programmers freedoms & the public domain from appropriation.
Is this a technologic or moral problem and can laws solve it ?
Is easy to feel that the issue is artists should be paid, but if one is poor then access to culture and information can be simply unaffordable.
Everyone listens to more music than they can buy. Truefans moreso.
For most artists obscurity is the issue and realistically the big studios/ labels steal more from artists than anyone.
A tricky moral issue that could trivially be solved with strong government and enforced licenses like they did for radio & libraries.
Just like artists get paid when the radio plays a song, it should be the same for sharing, remixing & mashups.
But lobbies legislate these issues, so the monopoly of ludditism prevails.
IMHO false scarcity of knowledge is immoral and unnecessary and if we ever going to get off planet before a meteor hits we must advance beyond the Status Quo.
When you can tell me who owns the number two, I can tell you who owns a song.
It's not just "I want movies without paying" posturing. Culture is reuse and remixing. Half of internet culture these days comes from V, from Tyler Durden, from The Matrix, from the Terminator. Should response GIFs and image macros be illegal?
Literally ALL use of every kind is fair use.
Creators should get paid, yes, but that does not warrant the current farce in any way whatsoever. The "legal solutions" foisted upon us under the current model (eg Spotify) see creators getting paid approximately the same amounts as they did under the Napster setup.
I hate to admit it, but rms was right about the whole mess, and it was much, much bigger than computer code.