Copyright law is about finding a balance between, on one side, incentivizing creators via granting them a legal monopoly on publishing, and on the other side, the philosophical notion of freedom of speech, which would allow anyone to republish, remix, and repurpose any preexisting work. The original formulation of this legal monopoly was that it was supposed to be short enough that it would expire well within the average person's lifetime, a notion which has long been gutted via regulatory capture.