That's what it was like in the 19th century. If I recall correctly copyright law was established because of book publishers and the initial legislation had a default of 14 years before works passed into the public domain. After the 14 years publishers could extend the term by paying for it but each extension was only a couple of years. This unfortunately drastically changed during the second half of the last century when Congress was lobbied extensively.

I recommend reading Lawrence Lessig's book "Free Culture" which came out at the height of the file sharing craze in the 2000s. It explains perfectly how we ended up here and why it doesn't have to be this way.