How do conglomerates affect print publishing? Are there positives and negatives associated with conglomerates?

Authors and photographers have rights to their intellectual property throughout their lives, and their family members have rights for seventy years after their death. The length of the copyright protection has grown over the years. This life-plus-70-years standard was set by the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. People who support this law use examples such as poor writers and their impoverished ancestors, but actually the people who benefits from this are more likely to be transnational publishing conglomerates. However, copyright is supposed to place time limits on those rights to make sure that outdated works may include new creative efforts, therefore, the extended copyright protection angers new creative actions, including poetry and song lyrics on the internet.  This includes many copyright issues with songs being released on the internet the same day a CD is released or sometimes even before if the songs leak and appear on a website.  People will then download the songs off of the internet and create their own CD for free, which is illegal. There are both positives and negatives associated with conglomerates and these are the arguments made amongst the groups who benefit from it and those who are harmed from it.  Others follow the notion that some copyright infringements serve a higher social purpose, such as education, and should be allowed.  For example, making single copies for personal use would be one of these “infringements.”  If a student makes a copy of a course packet, it is considered fair use and no copyright royalty is owed.  However, if the student were to ask someone at a copy shop to make the copies for them then there is a copyright violation.