My apologies for having a very US-centric view-- it's all I know. The US Constitution says: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

I have a problem with how the law has been twisted by the copyright industry to render "limited Times" to mean a virtual eternity. Fix that and I have no beef with copyright. The public domain is important and needs to be nourished. The "Founders' copyright", with respect to duration, has been shown by multiple studies to be more than sufficient to create economic incentive while, at the same time, not starving the public domain.