Copyright was created to protect what writers, artists, photographers and musicians create:  intellectual property.  Ultimately, it was meant to afford artists a decent income.
This post will not address the interesting questions:  did it ever really work that way (most artists never seemed to have made much money from the copyright system) and has it just become a [...]

Back in the early 20th century, Franz Kafka gave us Before the Law ; and nothing seems to have changed much. I would encourage you to read the 600 or so words of this short story yourself before I paraphrase below.
A naïve and humble guy comes from the country to seek the Law. However, instead [...]