protect from what exactly?

do you realize that you could make your works in the privacy of your work environment, offer them for sale and only deliver them to the buyer once the purchase agreement is a closed deal? you ask however much you wish for it, one or multiple parties get together to buy it, and once you sell it, it's theirs, not yours.

what else does your sense of entitlement make you perceive as reasonable? that violating others' property rights, and demanding government to intervene in the economy to undermine property rights, freedom, and market efficiencies afforded by digital equipment, for the sake of preserving incredibly inefficient monopolies? that it's reasonable to impose your authoritarian wishes on how others are to use their own rightfully owned equipment and materials? that you gain more by allowing others to deprive you of culture for over a century, than by allowing them to use your comparatively tiny contributions to it as they see fit?

"but muh rights, they're invaluable to me!" what are you talking about? check the contracts you signed with your publisher, unless you're one of a few stars, they most certainly aren't yours any more.

(does this look leftist to you? :-)