As much as I agree that copyright in its current form is a joke, I don't believe it's responsible for destroying the internet. The internet is a wasteland because too many people are on it. It started out as a thing for academics, then became available to non-academics with enough skills to use it (and whom appreciate it), then young people got access to it in school, then smartphones put it in everyone's pocket, and finally we have virtually everyone in every part of the bell curve on it whether they comprehend it or not. The greater the audience, the more the internet is dragged towards the mean. Of course it will no longer serve the same purpose it once did. The original types who were on it early make up less than 1% of the current internet population.

Don't get me wrong, copyright enforcement has degraded many things, but the old internet wouldn't be significantly different today if all other variables remained static.