But it is a "writing" (or at least the publishing of it is) and is entitled to protection under copyright law. I do agree about the excessive length of most copyrights, especially Congress's penchant for retroactively extending copyright lengths.
The DMCA has been dubbed by many the "Mickey Mouse Copyright Act," because it was passed a few years before "Steamboat Willie" was about to pass into the Public Domain.
Copyright protections in the US are well beyond those in the Berne Convention and adopted by the rest of the world.