Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said. >With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural experience There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be pa…
> To the best of my understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago. The current availability of books published last century is actually smaller than the current availability of books published before that. So there is actually a bit of a cultural hole from the 1900's because of materials are still in copyright and not published by their owners. Often it isn't even known who is the current ow…
Copyright exists to serve the public. I think it largely achieves that goal. There are fair arguments to be made as to when copyright/patents stop serving the public interests. I don't think DRM as an enforcement of the copyright laws nullifies the protection already given. When it comes to copyright the following quote is long but largely sums of my thoughts.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection." from An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html