They were originally established to protect individual authors from theft from publishers. In fact, here’s the first line of the US copyright office’s description of the laws: “It is a principle of American law that an author of a work may reap the fruits of his or her intellectual creativity for a limited period of time.”

The irony is that the publishers have since bypassed the intent of the laws by just buying all the author’s rights before being published.

Yes, I know. Activision owns the copyrights. But, the principle intent of the laws was to reward individuals, not huge corporations.