Right. IMO copyright in general seriously conflicts with the very concepts of free expression and ownership. As corporations eat the world and are able to push to maximize copyright to protect their profits, our rights of expression and ownership are diminished. Fair use and the first sale doctrine will ultimately be meaninglessly minimized curiosities if we don't fight, tooth and nail, corporate IP holders and the bought state entities that protect them.

This.

When IP laws existed to make sure authors could be compensated people broadly supported them. The perception has changed (for many reasons), to where people broadly see IP laws as an enabler for corporate greed more than being about fair compensation for authors. (See Disney not paying owed royalties, for example.)

We can either have "good copyright" that the public sees as reasonable, or we can have rampant piracy and the consequences thereof. The villains of the piece are those who deliberately perpetuate an unsustainable system out of greed (and I am not talking about authors and publishers trying to get paid for the work they've done).

> they gradually became a way to protect profits.

It was always from the very beginning a way to protect profits, that was the primary intent of copyright law, to give the creator of a work the exclusive right to make the money from the work before others are allowed to take the content and sell it for their own profit. Yes the length has become crazy long, and yes the law limits free (as in beer) access to information, but that hasn’t changed the reason for it’s being at all. It’s not really a “concession” either, more like it was intentionally balanced to provide enough time for people to make profits (which is what economically encourages creative work), while being short enough to allow works to reach the public over time.