Marco, my feeling is that copyright is not about rights at all, or even works. It’s a tool for administering government arts policies. All governments have arts policies.

Yes, I agree that the artist is often not the party who holds the rights. People who take disputes to court are usually investors with money riding on the outcome, so the law is oriented towards investors in music-related business ventures. For example few musicians have big hits but the law is about protecting those few rather than the many with no hits.