There's copyright in many other industries - book publishing, software, etc. - but in those industries the government doesn't control how much the parties get paid. Yes, the government grants the copyright and its courts enforce it, but that's all. For example, if I write an e-book, I can determine the price I sell it for and I'm not forced to allow Amazon to sell it.
>Yes, the government grants the copyright and its courts enforce it, but that's all.
You're skirting a very deep issue. Copyright is a legal construct, whose every aspect is completely arbitrary, and comes about from a balance of competing goals. You find it perplexing that for certain copyrighted material distributed over a certain medium in a certain way, government sets a fixed price? I find it perplexing that you find it perplexing. Shouldn't you should also be asking why the copyright term is over a century long now, why there are satire and 'fair use' exceptions, why certain kinds of remixing is allowed, and others not. There are countless more strange and weird aspects to copyright, because everything about copyright is completely arbitrary.
> For example, if I write an e-book, I can determine the price I sell it for and I'm not forced to allow Amazon to sell it.
You may or may be allowed to restrict resale of your book. Your work is allowed to be reproduced (without compensation to you and without permission from you) in braille, for the blind. You will not be able to restrict state libraries from lending (for free) copies of your book.
> Copyright is a legal construct, whose every aspect is completely arbitrary, and comes about from a balance of competing goals.
As side note, this is true of all property rights; real and tangible personal property are no different than copyrights or other IP rights in this respect.
This often gets forgotten, apparently just because legal protection of real and tangible personal property rights in some form is far older than copyright.
