It isn’t about an easier negative. Different people want different qualities of light brought out in the print.
Burn one section of the photo, dodge another, etc. That is the hand of the artist.
If you make a copy negative off the print, the print is the original and everything else is a much less valuable COPY.
Also, in the computer analogy, you cannot use “undo”. If you mess up in a step, you start all over again (you cannot remove light exposure from a piece of photo paper under the negative).
“If you make a copy negative off the print, the print is the original and everything else is a much less valuable COPY.”
Okay. They still sell prints of that image. Are you saying they haven’t made some accommodation for that and are still hand printing every one from the original negative?