Very, very well said. Your comment is 100% clear thinking. And that Coppola interview is one of the better interviews with a director, or an artists for that matter, that I have every read.
Maybe it's just that you and FFC are saying what I want to hear. But I don't think so. I think you are both spot on.
This is just where things are headed.
Alas, these established monopolies will not go away quietly without a fight. They will sue, and they will sue again. Eventually the lawsuits will be futile.
Meanwhile, to make the future happen today is to take a risk.
You have to have thick skin and see past the lawsuits.
They cannot sue every potential competitor out of existence. They can only make a few examples and hope it scares all the others.
They were not trying to stop storage f copyrighted material. They were trying to stop transfer of it. "Links" to a file, provided to the public, were the method of transfer.
Dropbox is used as a method of transferring files. Thus is it is very similar to Megaupload.
If Dropbox (or, say, YouTube) has many customers who may not be transferring copyrighted material, how relevant is this?
If that is the distinguishing factor, then perhaps all future pirates should upload copius amounts of noncopyrighted material to their services, and encourage others to do so. As long as they have a good ratio of "legtimiate content" to "illegimate content", then they will have a "Dropbox" defense.
and pagers are better for reading through documents than vi, or emacs.