Yes, but what has he done that has been directed towards US laws, regulations, and policies, to protect the right to read?
You see, the GPL takes the copyright system and turns it on its head. That's why it is named a copyleft license, an obvious pun.
How does it do that? Well, copyright prevents distribution. The GPL rides this restriction and says that you may not distribute GPL-licensed software unless (1) you distribute it with no extra restrictions + (2) the distributed binary is either accompanied by source-code or the source-code is available on request. The GPL COULD NOT demand this if it weren't for the copyright law and in regards to freedom / protecting users rights, it works out great because nobody can abuse the GPL without legal repercussions.
It's actually beautiful if you think about it and innovative - it enabled open-source / free software to really disrupt the software industry, creating the equivalent of the public commons. And this movement went viral and moved to books, music and movies. And this would have happened without the GPL, but on a much lower scale. The GPL is the spark that started the fire.
BTW - to change the world you don't need to change the laws. The alternative is to make them obsolete and technology has a habit of doing that ;-)