I have always had strong feelings that copyrights should be much, much shorter than they are. The intent in making them in the first place was to encourage people to publish their work rather than hide it, and it is clear at this point that we are way past that point - most things that are published would still be published with much shorter copyright terms. But that has always been from my perspective as a consumer.
This article makes a strong case that the current copyright regime actually hurts creators badly as well, and tends to make it harder to create music out of fear of lawsuits for being too similar to something else, at least here in the US. Thought it worth a read and relevant here in the land of music.