You should really read up on the history of copyright, because it's the genuinely the exact opposite of what you're saying. Copyright initially enforced restrictions on printing press operators and was used as part of the censorship mechanism. There's an argument that copyright actually slowed progress and countries with weak copyright advanced faster. It logically follows because allowing unlimited copies of works to be made regardless of ownership allows for dissemination of information quicker.
Progress of knowledge is covered differently and it's why the US has carved exceptions for facts (they're exempt from copyright) and we use a patent system for inventions. Think of current problems with companies like Elsiver that use copyright as a cudgel to keep academic papers from the masses.
Thank you for the link, and that is some very good background that I had been unaware of. There are some other interesting examples, such as Hollywood becoming the motion picture capital of the US by virtue of being farther away from Thomas Edison, and therefore harder to sue.
I definitely agree that copyright can, and frequently does hinder progress. My statement is perhaps limited to the US, where patents and copyrights are given an explicit goal in Article 1 of the Constitution, stating "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The "to promote the progress" wording is important, as it tells a goal, and not just a legal capability.
A thought experiment I like is to consider the best way to promote progress in the arts and sciences. Suppose there were a magic box, which could instantly tell the full value of any invention or artwork or writing. You put something in, and it tells you how much it benefits society. Then there could be a program set up to reward authors and inventors for making things. They come up to the box, put the work in, and get paid the amount that the magic box tells you. In exchange for contributing to society, there is some compensation for doing so.
Of course, no such magic box exists, nor can it. We could have some sort of a poll to determine the overall worth of a new book or a better can opener, but that would have a lot of overhead. So instead, for a limited time, we reward authors and inventors by giving them a temporary monopoly over making copies of what they wrote, and that can become a monetary reward by selling those copies. Because we don't have an objective measure of a book's worth, we fall back to subjective measures. But this is still fundamentally a restriction on society as a whole, not to reproduce something that they have purchased, and that restriction requires some ongoing basis. It cannot be forever, and it must always be in service of promoting the arts and sciences, because that is the only reason why the offer of a legal monopoly in exchange for open publication exists.
(As a tangent, I don't understand any basis for legal protections of trade secrets, beyond civil penalties for breaking a contract. Companies using trade secrets have decided not to accept the bargain offered by patents, and therefore should also not have the benefits of legal protections.)
(And a second tangent, I don't think that computer programs released without source code should be eligible for copyright protection. The authors have not fulfilled their side of the bargain by releasing a work in a form that can be built upon and expanded by society once their limited-time monopoly has expired, and so they should not receive the legal monopoly offered in that bargain.)
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
Progress of knowledge is covered differently and it's why the US has carved exceptions for facts (they're exempt from copyright) and we use a patent system for inventions. Think of current problems with companies like Elsiver that use copyright as a cudgel to keep academic papers from the masses.