Obviously the labels are doing it for themselves, but even their argument that they're doing it for the (very old) artists isn't a good one. The purpose of the

Obviously the labels are doing it for themselves, but even their argument that they're doing it for the (very old) artists isn't a good one. The purpose of the copyright was to ultimately create a richer culture, and to do that they needed artists to create works of art, but once they do that, the period of time for which they own the copyright should be optimized for "minimization" not maximization, so the society at large can benefit from them. Copyiright was designed to ultimately help the society. Helping the artists protect their works is just a step towards that goal, not the goal itself. But sadly the labels are trying to make protecting the works the ultimate and only goal of copyright, because they get to benefit even more than the artists themselves from that.