Don't distinguish between Internet and pre-Internet. The paradigm of copyright has always been broken because it privileges publishers over creators, no less today than at any other time. The incentives of creators and audiences align; the incentives of publishers are completely opposed to those of creators and audiences. Publishers are businessmen; all they think they know how to do is drive prices up by creating artificial scarcity. At any given moment, they are only exploiting a handful of their properties, and hoarding the rest, actively seeking to prevent their circulation.
The incentives of creators and audiences do not align. Audiences want free stuff and can’t be bothered to pay. Creators have to be paid.
You are correct about publishers being aligned with neither.
In media nobody is really aligned with anyone. The publisher wants to screw the creator. The audience wants to screw the publisher (and the creator). Other perverse incentives exist too, like bombing the market with ad supported free crap to win attention.
The creator has always been at the bottom of the totem pole. If artists were not self motivated to make the art for its own sake, nobody would ever choose that profession.
