Early expectations were that the press would reinforce the Church and the use of Latin, but most Europeans were monoglot and few authors could compose satisfactory new Latin works. The rest, as they say, is history. It has been another 500 years, and many think it's not unfair to characterize the Net as nothing short of an information revolution, comparable to the invention of the printing press. The WIPO treaty and other current global legislative attempts at reigning in the anarchistic aspects of the Net will almost certainly meet with the same fate as the Church's attempts to keep the press from undermining their interests. Science and technology regularly shape the economy, law, politics, and even religion, and only rarely is the opposite true.
Politicians believe that they can continue to grant the current franchise.
In today's distribution model very little of the money spent by consumers actually reaches the artist's pocket. As an example, take newspapers. The majority is paid by advertisers who want some of our eyeball time. For some advertisers it's a good investment. But they probably waste their money on me.