Assuming you live in the US, you live in a republic. You voice is heard through your vote for your representative, as well as any conversation you may have with him or her convincing her of your point. The representative secures rights, in this case copyrights, through legislation, which aim to, yes, reflect "things just generally agreed on based on the whims of contemporary culture."
I couldn't care less how the system views me and what they allow me to do. It's how they stop me from doing what I wish that matters. I'll go out of the way to accomplish what I want despite whatever others wish. I'll change nation's if that will bring me the value I desire in the end. I am a free body.
The point I've been trying to make throughout this whole ordeal, disagreeing with that legislation doesn't grant you the right to be exempt from copyright.
Sure it does. It doesn't affect me one damn bit. It can't touch me.
Which is actually understandable if you've never been in a position to have produced something for which copyright granted a noticeable benefit, yet have been in a number of positions where you have either seen or felt the negative repercussions of breaking copyright.
It doesn't affect me on an individual level. On a societal scale, it's only a negative benefit. Innovation is empirically limited by copyright laws.
But the people who actually produce something will always be given the preferential treatment. As they should be.
Not for long. The force that makes their treatment possible is gradually becoming irrelevant.
Haha! Fourteen! My guess is you're fourteen, Alpha! It could go a few years either way, you could be an old-twelve year old or a young eighteen year old, but I hold to fourteen. ^_^