There's a recent survey from Spain of students using e-books, and they complained they'd rather have the paper book because of the restrictions that are put on the e-books. There are all kinds of restrictions. You can pay all the money you want, but you still have these restrictions, and the restrictions interfere with the educational process. That's the problem.
As to your historical example, I'm afraid I have to respectfully disagree with you. Copyright did not create intellectual property. Intellectual property is a new word; it's been around only since the 1960s. What it did was give authors the copyright, not le droit d'auteur; that's a French concept. It gave the right to copy for a limited time. It created the public domain. It said authors can have their right for a limited time, 27 years, as long as it promotes education. That was the origin of the law.