It's not that complicated: little guy taking stuff from big corp (then) vs. big corp taking stuff from little guy (now). Similar to the recent debates over permissive open source licenses and corporate exploitation.

As for the zeitgeist, I'm not sure anything has materially changed. Recently, creators have been very upset over Silicon Valley AI companies ingesting their output. Is this really reflective of "general internet sentiment"? Would those same people have supported abolition of copyright in the past? I doubt it.