Loss of the Editor/Producer

I just read the news about Microsoft criticizing Google for not following copyright law. Which got me started thinking about the future for the concept of copyright. Yah, I know it is an old debate, but here is my 2 cents on it.
Why did the copyright issue evolve, and why would it change now?
I'm sure the copyright protection did not exist, before the age of copying technology. At those times, an audiance had to be in presence of the performer in order to enjoy any creative production of any kind. And since we developed technology, which allowed reproduction of some crerations e.g. written creations, recorded music etc. the issue of protection came. Even now, there is not much issue about copyright protection in sculpture, which cannot be reproduced easily or economically.
I think the entity which are very sensitive about the copyright protection are the producers. It is most probably are not the creators themselves. It is the producers, who make the production possible, mainly by financing the creators and making it available to the audience. Therefore, in this age, where certain creative processes have become very inexpensive through technology (audio recordings) and reaching the audience is just few clicks to 'youtube', the producres really does not contribute much. A lot of the stuff is created by voluntary efforts by the creators (again audio recordings, news blogs), and reaching to people by technology and resources provided by a third person, who recoupes the cost by salling ads (Google).
This is precisely happening in a number of areas. As a scientist, I'm quite familiar with a similar debate in scientific publication and peer review process. Although the reviewers are not paid at all for reviewing the scientific work, the whole process is expensive, and does not work a lot of times. Remember the Korean Cloning Scandal? Several top journals are therefore testing with open review process, and complete online journals.
So does this mean there is no need for editors or producers in the near future? That will then bring the responsibility to the reader, the consumer. Instead of having an edited carefully finished product, they will just have to live with bits and pieces of raw creations. May be we will have another googlish smart software to pick and choose for one's specific taste, like your My Yahoo page with more sophistication. I think a lot of people are actually betting on similar ideas to develop more and more technology towards parfecting individual's taste predicting software.