One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
I don’t think that the title is a mistake either; I was focusing solely on what the title says, on a language level, versus what the other user (Kairos) believes to be more accurate.
With that out of the way: yup, copyright was always like this. The basic premise of copyright is to not allow you to share things under certain conditions, and yet this sharing is essential for culture.