Well, on the one hand you've got a camp advocating keeping private property more under the control of its owners/creators.
"Private Property"? You have a strange concept of private property, and Lockean notions of private property had
nothing to do with copyright as it's observed today.
The government isn't taking anything away from you. It is the government that is hammering down on others to prevent them from using your words, your thoughts, your world, etc. That's pro-active action on government's part (ie, capitalistic Socialism). If government stayed out of it entirely, then you wouldn't have any protection at all. Keep that in mind.
Just because they're rich doesn't mean they're somehow different from you under the law.
Actually, they are.
In practice in America, copyright protects those with money (ie, who can afford Copyright/IP lawyers), and does not protect those without it (the rest of us). They lobby congress to change and enact laws that the general populace wouldn't want (or benefit from), but we don't have money to throw to politicial candidates to try to counteract that.
Once again,
I am pro-copyright. Please remember this! I am not arguing against copyright entirely. I think it's important that we have copyright. But I don't think it should be at the expense of personal freedoms, fair use rights, and the Public Domain (remember: without
some copyright protection, people wont create works to go
into the Public Domain)!