Please! The copyright law was created to
protect authors/creators/owners so that other
people/company can't use their works for
themselve and by doing so take a part of the 
profit that should have gone to the original 
author/owner.

The side effect is that there is now some 
companies whose only job is to look for people
breaking copyright and then offer the copyright 
holder to sue in exchange of a part of what they 
will gain.

Do you realy believe that because someone post the 
lyric of a song on a website, less people will by 
the CD ? Do you realy think that because someone 
post screen captures/scan of cels that less people 
will watch the anime ? Isn't this doing free 
advertising for the produce hmm ?
It is one things to enforce copyright to prevent 
abuse. It is another things to enforce it just 
because you can do it and make some money at the 
same time.

Don't speak of fairness about copyright law. There 
isn't any. It's a totaly stupid law. Nobody realy 
choosed to have it like that. But it's too 
complicated (and too subject to change) to define 
what is "fair" use., what isn't damaging to the 
copyright holders that the only way was to forbid 
everything. Which itself leads to abuse by some
copyright hoders.

Concerning your example... no, most of those 
people, if not all, didn't choosed to whom to 
license their work. They are hired by a company 
and the work they do is the property of that 
company. It's this company that then choose to 
license or exploit themselve the result of that 
work.
As to listing "big names" in your message,
that isn't an argument : copyright law is the same 
whatever for a large famous company or a totaly 
unknow person. The only thing that change is if 
you can afford to try to enforce your copyright or 
not... which is just one more proof that it's a 
totaly stupid law : The only realy protected 
person are those who need the less such 
protection.

Yes, any single of your webpages, even the worse
one, are your property and protected by copyright 
law. You don't even have to write the copyright 
notice on the page (but it's slightly better to).
So why can't you prevent people for making copies
of your site and seting it up under their own name 
? Because you can't afford to enforce your 
copyright. Why can a company sue you because you
made a couple of icons that looks too similar to 
some of their characters ? Because they can afford 
to enforce your copyright. Fairness is sulking
in a corner looking shamefuly elswhere...

Cheers,
Yann Stettler

PS: more and more "creators" think that there is
other ways of doing things. And that yes, 
companies are abusing of their rights. In fact,
quite a lot of "creators" are not realy well 
protected against the companies that hold the 
right to their work.