I absolutely agree, but I think that the creative part of photography comes from having "the eye" for knowing what a good photo will be, before it's taken. The photo would not have existed to be as good if the photographer did not apply his creative insight in capturing the photo.

But in my opinion, for photographers to dictate the terms of their photos' usage is nothing but hiding behind the status quo (the current copyright laws) to stroke their own egos. They don't want anyone else to be mistaken for as the "creator" of the photo, because that is just too damaging to their ego. They can't just capture an image for people to enjoy (by seeing, or by remixing, or whatever), they have to make sure their name is attached to it and in people's faces for all eternity.

It's really childish, but it's human behavior. We evolved in a world of finite resources where ownership of and the ability to defend those finite resources meant survival and status. Now we have this new medium where we can create resources and duplicate them nearly infinitely, but we're still hard-wired to try to control every one of those infinite copies, because they're MINEMINEMINEMINE. But we obviously can't watch what everyone is doing, so we just mercilessly beat down anyone who looks like they're getting any attention from using a copy.

Sorry for the wall of text, as a digital artist I feel pretty passionate about the subject.