>allows people to feel like they have power over someone else (the animals they eat)

I doubt it..a lot of folks don't even think about the particular animal while eating. 

>I assume maintenance is worse if you're doing something illegal or hosting media servers that access material in violation of copyright laws.

files are files. 

even the corn plant is a great example. people don't eat corn leaves, cobs, or stalks, but livestock eat silage made from them.

take soy, as an example.

some 80%+ of all soy is pressed for oil, but a soybean is only about 20% oil anyway. that leaves 80% of 80% of the total crop as industrial waste. we feed that to livestock. (we call it soymeal or soycake). so no insects are harmed to produce that for livestock: they were harmed to make soybean oil. by feeding the byproduct to livestock, we are conserving resources.