Or we could do something totally crazy like participate in the democratic process, and try to elect people that will stand up for fair-use distribution rights, copyright reform, and also reform of campaign finance (which is the root of the problem, megacorporations buying out lawmakers in order to get laws adjusted to benefit themselves at the expense of the public).
At this point, there isn't much we can do within the constraints of TRIPS. (Our copyright term is life + 70 years, widely considered much too long, but TRIPS requires life + 50 which isn't that much better.) So it's not just a matter of domestic politics, but actually getting all the WTO member nations to sign off on a copyright rollback.
One area in which something can be done is fair use.
The actual statute is fairly open, leaving a lot to the courts--the trick is making a more liberal reading of ? 107 fashionable to the US courts. Over the past decade or two, the federal courts--led by the Second Circuit--have come to value factor 1 (transformative use) above all others in making the fair use determination.
That's potentially helpful for fanworks, which are certainly transformative in that you're doing something different with the characters. But even under today's standards, to win under fair use you must show that you were borrowing from the original work for a different and legitimate purpose (use), and that you borrowed no more than necessary for that purpose. Under
U.S. v. Gaylord, one might argue that my Haruhi doujin makes the same use as the original work (i.e. to tell a story about a bitchy reality-warping girl.) But then, courts have been growing more receptive in terms of what kinds of uses they will credit as fair. In
Blanch v. Koons, the defendant C&P'd a photo of some legs as part of a collage for a German art installation. He was exonerated under fair use because his use of the photo was for a different purpose (social commentary), plus he Photoshopped the legs up a bit (physical transformativeness.) Then in
Perfect 10 v. Amazon, Google's generation of Image Search thumbnails was immunized under fair use, because they're necessary to search engines, which are highly socially beneficial.
Even with this precedent, it's probably a ways off before courts will give my Sola bondage doujin a pass. And then the real problem is uncertainty--fair use is notoriously expensive to litigate, presenting some very murky questions of fact that require a lot of evidence and expert testimony to be trotted out for the jury. So maybe Google can bring home a big fair use victory, but your average basement doujinshika will almost certainly be forced to settle.
