One of Doctorow's claims is that copying will never be harder than it is right now--and people who make a living providing copyable content need to be aware of that.

I'm not quite sure he's right; JM Greer has a lot to say about the coming decline of the American empire and collapse of the petroleum-based techno-economic system. But barring an end to cheap electricity, which would destroy the high-tech global economy, yes, copying is not going to get harder. Pushing it farther out of the limelight won't make it go away, and we have much better tools now than we did in the days of usenet & BBS dial-in exchanges.

I have fond memories of &TOTSE and the "HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN LOCKPICKS" text files exchanged on shell accounts.