The issue with copyright law is that it is all or nothing. Rights to a work are either tightly held by an author/publisher, and even downloading a small excerpt can get you in trouble, or it is fully public domain and open for any and all use.

There needs to be a middle ground, such as: after 15 years of publication any private individual can access and read the work for free, but the rightsholder still controls commercial sales, merchandising, licensing, character rights, movie rights etc.