I think this recent article gives a nice concrete insight with regards to how copyright suddenly turns at odds with working from home:

https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2020/07/articles/random-iss...

But I think this quote is what it essentially all boils down to:

> Are copyright holders going to pursue users for these issues? Likely playing some music during a live virtual happy hour with friends and family is not actionable – and may well not even be a “public” performance. But using music in an online meeting in a commercial setting may not be treated as kindly.

This is about liability and the extent to which you can be held liable by someone else.

Technically, all of the examples you gave are infringements of copyright. But copyright is ultimately a matter between two private parties. If you didn't ask permission up front, the other party may - and more importantly - may not (!) decide to claim damages.

When music plays in the background during your Zoom call, that's technically copyright infringement. Is Geffen going to come after you personally because you had Bing Crosby's White Christmas playing during a family occasion over Zoom or Skype? Hardly.

What about Zoom? This is where things get interesting.

For all intents and purposes, Zoom basically enables millions of people to play Crossby's song in the background during their social calls. Is Zoom then damaging the commercial interests of Geffen?

This is the crux of the matter: depends on which angle you consider the role Zoom is playing. If you consider just 1 case - you and your family members - then Zoom is just a service provider that tends to the infrastructure and makes video calling a possibility. But if you look at millions of cases - millions of people playing music over Zoom - then maybe Zoom isn't a just a service provide: it's a publisher of protected creative content. And it's actively infringing on the rights held by Geffen causing a significant sum of missed income for the record label.

This is also exactly why Facebook disallows prohibiting music and music listening on FB Live.

Facebook tries to create the perception that is - from a legal point of view - just a service provider that only does the piping and has literally nothing to do with what people post on it's platform. The moment a judge rules "Nah, Zuck, you're a publisher", all bets are off and literally any big record label, movie producer,... can come after Facebook for infringing on copyright simply because anyone and their dog unwittingly shared protected content on the platform.

> Put in another way, everything is so easy to replicate that it has zero value, and copyright is attempting to force people to pay for things that aren't worth anything.

Hardly. Copyright gives rights holders that possibility, but it doesn't force consumers to pay up by default.

The gross majority of pictures, videos and audio isn't valuated at a million dollar price point. Just because you play in a band on Saturday, doesn't make your music on par with The Beatles. Still, that valuation is irrelevant as far as copyright goes: you have the exact same rights as far as protection goes as The Beatles. If someone rips your music from Bandcamp, you can equally decide to sue them. Exactly like what The Beatles would do. In the exact same courtrooms.

What makes all the difference is context. For instance, it might be smart to just let others share and publish your songs and not care about the apparent infringement: you just hope that someone important notices your song and offers you a nice deal. That's a big difference with shelling off pirated singles with The Yellow Submarine: The Beatles - or better, the record label holding the rights to their music - are already past that stage and would mind you stealing from their plate.

The big problem, as a consumer, is that it's not always very clear what you can and can't do as copyright literally pertains to any creative work, regardless. Creative content sold in a commercial context is, ultimately, just a one facet of a much larger reality where copyright applies.

That's what makes it so confusing for the general public: they tend to apply copyright just to commercially sold music and video, whereas it reaches much, much farther.