Monopolies are bad in generally free markets. Intellectual property and copyright are antithetical to markets. Copyright exists to grant (in the modern era than

Monopolies are bad in generally free markets. Intellectual property and copyright are antithetical to markets. Copyright exists to grant (in the modern era thanks to Disney, permanent) monopolies to applicable works, thus divorcing them from the market. So you can't really frame a discussion on the behavior of rightsholders relative to markets when their "market" is manufactured by government and meant to keep their works monopoloized. The real consideration in regards to copyright and market forces is how market forces right against copyright - the existence of tcp, bittorrent, popcorn time, the hundreds of websites streaming copyrighted material against the rightsholders will - they are all the actual market offering information without the monopolization aspect. Its the distortion in the intention because you aren't supposed to have options in procuring copyrighted works - the distribution channels were originally complicated and expensive enough that centralization was required to create copies and thus anyone violating copyright was targetable. The system becomes dysfunctional when millions of people are giving away copies for free, on demand, instantly, anywhere in the world via the Internet - or in the olden days, via CD or VHS rips. It was the advent of digitization of information that brought about the paradigm shift threatening the institution, not any one specific implementation of the concept. But yea, monopoly is generally regarded as a bad thing in economics. Why is a huge segment of the economy then built around manufacturing artificial monopolies, primarily to the benefit of those with the means to enforce the terms of said monopolies - rarely an individual creator, often a fortune 500 company.