I do. Because the publisher is no longer acting as your agent, but on their own behalf.
The thing that is wrong with the current arrangement is brought into sharp focus by the case of Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice”. The goth band Unto Ashes recorded a song with the poem as lyrics, but that track cannot be released in the U.S. because long ago Robert Frost signed the rights to his works over the Henry Holt & Co. As a result, about 35 years after his death, about 75 years after he penned the poem, a commercial interest prevents its use in derivative works of art.
If your publishers are a**holes like Henry Holt & Co., your works will not be able to be used freely by others years after your death. I hope you see something wrong with that.
Not so. I write the books; the publisher does everything else. Perhaps some day I will want to do everything myself. Until then, the publisher and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement.
I see no reason why an author should not be able to sell his copyrights to a publisher. Nor do I see why the copyrights purchased by a publisher should not be protected by law just as if the author had retained them.