Doesn't the ease and low risk of individual copyright violation place an upper bound of sorts. Sharing sites are still everywhere, and they were never very successful in making people confuse civil for criminal.

Don't disagree. Just paying lawyers was sort of a facile dismissal on my part. In video content, there's a lot of history that makes it hard to get closer to the way things are in music. Though there are also monetary incentives and practicalities as well.

Yes, that's the lawyers part. They are stopping you from just skipping the impossible licensing step.