Um, I agree with most of that Hamlet, but the part where I disagree comes in the fact that there's a lot of companies, Disney being one of the biggest, who benefit from this perpetual copyright fiasco. Why? Because they have a cash cow and they intend to milk it until it dies. They don't want to be original. They don't want to think outside the box or make anything new. The only way you'll get them to do that is if they're forced to, and even then they'll cash cow it to death and go postal on your hyde if you even dream about touching their little baby. In short, they want to take whatever they can get their hands on, bleed it dry of monetary value, and then throw it away after it's completely spent and worthless to anyone else.
By rights, Mickey Mouse should be public domain by now. So should a lot of other things. But the media companies, the biggest driver of this copyright madness, refuses to allow it to happen, because to do so means they have to become original again, and originality in hollywood is pretty much dead, save for a few exceptions, and even those aren't all that original. Mostly because hollywood is hooked on formulas. Formulas that cash cow things, suck the maximum value out of them, and then throw their dead, rotting corpse in the ditch when they're done with them.
I at one time would have loved to have had my books done up as movies, tv shows, and/or mini-series. Now I'm seriously questioning that idea.
Of course, if I did, one of the stipulations in my contract would be that all stuff released would have to be DRM free, and if people pirated it, they wouldn't be allowed to go after them. Of course, you know that'd fly like a lead balloon, but oh well. I'm sick of the mess they've made, and I refuse to be a part of that.