Masters Of Their Domains

In the pantheon of kvetching about the record industry, the fact that most artists sign away the rights to their own recordings seems to come up often as an entrenched form of exploitation. The argument, in part, has to do with record labels repackaging and re-releasing material whenever they feel like it, sometimes at odds with the artists themselves, as was the case with the Radiohead box that EMI put out to try to cannibalize some of the In Rainbows wave.

But is the argument really that the labels shouldn't foist wave upon wave of reissues upon the public in an effort to convince them that they need to buy something they already own in some form, or is it that, if anyone gets to do that, it should be the artist?