Their motivation is money, not art, not ideas. Hence the idea of copyright, which, not surprisingly, is just about as old as the idea of real estate. The second modern difference is that our environment, our experiences, consist of a much greater amount of man made events- mass media. In addition to trees, the ocean, a sunset, we now have TV, movies, radio, newspapers, billboards, and countless other manufactured sensory inputs. Of course not.
Ideas belong to everyone.
Information is free, and you can do whatever you want with it. We here at Synergy don't believe so, and thus we believe today's copyright laws are grossly unfair. So please, unless you plan to steal someone's entire work and call it your own, ignore copyright laws. Appropriate and steal bits of culture for your own use in the creative expressions you want to make. Don't let the lawyers and accountants push you around.