Dear creators,
> We deserve to get paid for our work
But finding out actually _how_ to get paid is your problem. If you cant, nobody owes you a working business model. You dont somehow _have_ to work as a creator. If nobody wants to voluntarily pay you for doing creative stuff, go flip burgers.
> your desire to get other people's valuable hard work for free
This is not about "getting free stuff", no matter how often you creators repeat it.
The unpleasent fact about life is that people like to exchange information with each other, i.e. information wants to be free. Creative works are bits of information. To enforce your current business model, you have to constantly monitor and log the internet habits of millions and millions of people, and you have to punish millions and millions of them for something they feel is not wrong: exchanging useful information with their peers. Nobody cares that you declared parts of this information your "property", this kind of property is an artificial construct and is not widely supported. Your business modes is _very_ unnatural, it is literaly a fierce for-profit censorship scheme, with a giant apparatus doing nothing else but prosecuting people for too freely talking to each other, it is like North Korea applied to music.
> is not only unfair, but it's ultimately self-destructive
This is not your decision. In a democracy, we should be able to vote what is fair / unfair / constructive / destructive. Copyright, as we know it, is perceived as a mightily destructive force by a majority of people, which has been able to survive that long because of lobbyism, govermental intransparency (like having ACTA declared a threat level national security) and a tight relationship with publishing houses.
Todays copyright is opposing to the will of the majority of people, and if this democracy thingie is even worth half of what its called, then by hell, we will get rid of today's copyright soon. The established party system is actively preventing any kind of change, but as long as we can get a new, young, fresh party in (sorry US, get rid of your system or you will soon look old), we will be working on it. And if suing people for a living is your money making scheme, dear creator, you should start looking for another job soon.