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Personally, I believe that the copyright should last the lifetime of the author, plus say 15-20 years. Reason I think it should extend slightly past death, is to allow for the royalties to help cover debts of the estate. Sometimes, it takes a while for all debts to come to the surface, and also in the case of the majority of copyrights, they're not highly profitable so there is time to recoup money initially put out if the estate couldn't cover all debts.
For instances where the copyright owner is a corporation, I would set the lifetime of the copyright to be 60 or so years. Basically, try to find some average that a person lives after creating their works. Most people seem to be most creative in their 20s and 30s, so the average life expectancy less the average age. Say, if on average copyrights are created by 25 year olds, and most people live to 75, you have 50. Add on the 15 years, and you get to a copyright lifespan to 65 years. If the average for creator's age is 30, you get 60, etc.
The reason I think that copyrights shouldn't be for forever, is the vast majority of them go forgotten after a while. If you have them be permanent, you'll have a huge wealth of orphaned copyrights, and at that point they cannot be used by anyone. Eventually, you'll have so many copyrights you cannot use, that it will be difficult to create anything new because of possible copyright infringments.
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