Firstly a nitpick, copyright infringement is not stealing in a legal sense, "stealing" is theft, copyright infringement is just that.
I take your point, although I'm concerned with the implication that copyright infringement is OK. You probably didn't mean that, but I'm just trying to clarify.
There are lots of examples in law where providers of a service arent held responsible for how their customers us that service.
But isn't it different if the service exists for the (almost sole) purpose of making copyrighted works available?
Also, we should be a little bit object and consider that "everyone is doin it, so it cant be that bad".
Hmm, sorry to take an extreme example, but if everyone were killing innocent people, that would be bad.
International law is out of sync with societies views on copyright protection, something has to give, and it wont be the masses.
You're very right, but I'm not sure that a better copyright law would mean no copyright law.
My own view is that as a society we should be encouraging people "to work", rather than "have worked", copyright protections encourages people to stop working and live of their past actions. Look at some of the old rock bands going around, they make money of "Performance" (the present) rather than "recordings" (the past)
However, there has to be some incentive for people (and companies) to invest in R&D. If everything they build is just going to be given away for free then they won't innovate and they'll focus on services. Maybe that's what some people want to see, but without real investment there will be less innovation. It's kind of a fundamental thing about capitalism.