These are great questions!<p>US policy has, in at least one specific case, decided that you are not allowed to restrict use of the copyright, so long as you are fairly compensated for it.  This is called &quot;compulsory licensing.&quot;<p>Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, so it is natural that there will be tension over the extent of it.<p>Some people strongly feel that it is natural that creators should have control over the publishing of their content, others feel htat it is not so.<p>Roman law provided for no copyright, but several other legal traditions, including ancient Greek, as well as Jewish Talmudic laws provided for what today are known in Europe as &quot;moral rights&quot; which are distinct from copyright and cover things such as false-attribution and distortions of the work.<p>So the question would be, what grounds does a movie producer have to prevent me from giving away a thousand copies of a DVD I have purchased?  Clearly there are legal grounds, but are the legal grounds representative of some underlying philosophical ownership a creator has of their works, a monetary incentive for creators to publish their works, or something else?