“The sole purpose of Copyright law is to grant the author of a work a monopoly on that work for a given time period in order to exploit it for commercial gain. It is not meant to do anything more…”
As soon as you said that, your comment ran the risk of becoming complete and utter shite, as this one grossly misleading and oversimplified thesis statement tainted the otherwise serviceable arguments you raised afterward.
As TheRizz and Skeptic have already pointed out, the purpose of copyright law is to balance the author’s reward with society’s need to access and use new ideas. Copyright law establishes this balance by recognizing, but also limiting, the author’s monopoly. That limited monopoly is a mechanism which copyright law employs to serve its purpose, the author’s limited monopoly is not an end purpose in itself, and certainly has never been “the sole purpose” of copyright.
I would agree with your own assessment of having “a fairly good layman’s grasp on copyright law”, as you do raise some supportable points. Your central misunderstanding is a common one, and one which the entertainment and publishing conglomerates have been eager to propagate for a long time. My sincerest advice to you is that with a bit more reading you could have a very strong grasp on copyright law. If you can shake that central misunderstanding the rest of copyright law and future court rulings will make a lot more sense to you. I seldom write replies this long on internet threads anymore, but in your case it seemed worthwhile.
