To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I've never seen anyone claim that copyright was to protect distributors.
I've never seen anyone claim that copyright was to protect distributors.
Then I guess you have not been in this discussion for very long, or never paid attention. The fact is, copyright was never meant for creators. It was invented by distributors for distributors. The first copyright law was a censorship law to limit the amount of books printed when the printing press was was getting widely available in England that gave a total monopoly on publishing to a guild of publishers, without even attributing a book to the original author, but instead to the guild member who registered the book, attaining its newly invented "copyright".
You know what's the funniest thing about this? The content industry hails this as a stepping stone for authors and their rights, and what's worse, the public believes them. It's a lie, simple as that. Authors never asked for copyright. There was no collective push to stop the copying of their works. On the contrary, they wanted their works to be read.
The internet has made copyright obsolete. Moreso, it has made it harmful, and it needs to go away. The internet's here to stay. Copyright, by any means, isn't.
Intellectual property is system of monopolies inherently incompatible with a competitive, creative and innovative free market, how the IP-industry managed to turn this argument around in the minds of most people is truly scary.
To all who are interested in facts over fiction: if you want an even more comprehensive view on the matter, try http://questioncopyright.org/promise.
The mainstream interpretation most certain is that copyright is to protect creators, not distributors.
That is certainly the idealized, simplified narrative that most everyone will have been taught these days, but in terms of how copyright actually came about, way back when, it is largely a case of post-hoc rationalization. Hence the link: majority opinion doesn't change reality, only its perception.