To answer that, of course, we need to decide what those rights are. Just as inventors are given patents so that they can profit from their inventions for a limited time, so, too, authors were originally given copyright for a relatively short period – in the US, it was initially only 14 years from the first publication of the work.
核心问题在于：我们怎样在保护作者权利的同时，让所有人不止看到片段，而是看到完整的书籍和文章？当然要回答这个问题，首先要确定作者权利的内容。正如发明人被授予专利进而可以在有限时间内利用其发明获利，著作人起初也只在相对较短的一段时间内拥有版权——美国规定是自作品首次出版以后的14年。