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Notes -
Let’s say you’re JRR Tolkien and you’ve written the Lord of the Rings. It’s your unique creation and without you no copies could exist.
From my perspective, that means that you have a right to own the creation as a whole in perpetuity. This is why the argument that because copying doesn’t remove any given physical iteration of the work nothing has been taken from the owner never made much sense to me. This is also why I don’t think you should be able to buy or contractually obtain (as opposed to lease) copyright from someone. You are attempting to appropriate the rights of creatorship without being the creator.
(This is the maximal scenario for me. Lots of circumstances can reduce the author’s rights morally and in practice. For example, if the work was created by many people cooperating, like a TV show, if you take TLoR and just change a couple of the words, if the author is dead and the copyright is held by their great-grandchildren who despise him, etc.)
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