In an excellent article for the Institute for Policy Innovation, Professor of Computer Science Lee Hollaar argues that:

Technologists, and particularly computer programmers, seem to fixate on unlikely scenarios while giving only lip service to the massive copyright infringement now happening. When they do look at problems, they dismiss technical solutions because they are not perfect. And they ignore how laws can support or work alongside technology, because law is unfamiliar to them. By putting problems in perspective, technologists can be particularly effective in finding approaches to the real problems in today’s digital world.

Mountains Out of Molehills: How Believing the Worst Makes Technologists Ineffective, and What They Can Do About It.

Using as illustrations recent anti-DMCA papers from the EFF and Cato, he notes that the real story is how little harm can be attributed to the DMCA, and how the authors are forced to recycle the same few stories repeatedly in an effort to maintain the desired level of righteous indignation:

But perhaps most of the chilling effects of the DMCA do not come from the legislation, but the scare stories told by its opponents. A few stories are repeated (and sometimes embellished) until they reach mythic proportions, because there are few other examples available. If somebody has the temerity to say that there might be another side to the story and one should look at the facts, the outrage is deafening.

He concludes that:

The Cato and EFF papers illustrate how critics often make mountains out of molehills, while at the same time ignoring the real mountain of rampant copyright infringement. By concentrating on rare or hypothetical problems, rather than solutions or pressing ones, technologists will be ineffective during the formulation of policies that directly affect technology, the very time when their expertise would be valuable.