at all, they just protect the creative work I've done. The way the US lawmakers have warped copyright laws is another matter altogether. Due to this, other countries are now headed down that path to do the same or similar before they get shafted by the US laws and companies.

I can legally take anything you've said and rephrase the concepts in totally different words and it is not a breach of copyright, but using the same words is. When I've created a new character and world, they are copyrighted by me, but only in the style in which I've created them. Fanfic is an odd area because most of the fan authors actually violate the copyright by using the specifics used by the original authors; however, some of the originating authors do give permission, some don't. An example would be a fanfic story about a Hermoine Granger as a witch at Hogwarts is a copyright violation, while a story about a teenage surfer-girl called Hermoine Granger set in Hawaii and no magic with a different physical description is NOT a copyright violation because there is more than enough differences, although it would be better to change the name a bit to avoid any risks.

Every year millions of college and university students do assignments where they look up books and papers by known researchers and authors. They then have to prove they know what that stuff means by writing a paper where they rephrase the material. By using different words they are NOT breaching copyright of the initial material, even though they can use up to 10% as direct quotes to support what they're saying. So you can say what's written without a licence, you just can't give an exact quote without approval - that even applies to reporters.

In my opinion copyright should never have been applied to software,neither should patents be allowed for genes.

The copyright laws are all that protects my books from being stolen and printed under another person's name so they can make the money from their sales. That's what they were intended for, that and other works of art - I'd not call software a work of art.