it's a terribly stupid protection mechanism at that. for all but the handful of exploiters of artists in the publishing industry, whatever you earn from this protection mechanism, you spend a thousand times on everyone else's protection. if the protection mechanism didn't exist, everyone's life would be much richer, culturally, and artists could be crowd-funded to make new works, to deliver live performances and the likes, without a corporation-in-the-middle taking the lion's share of their earnings