Steve,
What is (in your view) fair?
The EU has never met a law they didn't like. Frankly, I don't smell a rat - I smell a Mouse! I think that Hollywood (sic) wants a Sono Bono act for the EU, and are trying to quitely get one. Their holy grail is to get copyright converted from a limited monopoly to a real (perpetual) property. So when I hear "harmonization", I don't think of bringing copyight into the 21st century. I think of a Rock Ridge land grab. I'll wager 1 oz. gold that the "harmonization" ends up as longer terms than Berne and harsher penalties for violation. You may consider that "the 21st century" but I consider it more like the 16th.
That's why I compare copyright law with patent law. How far would technology have progressed if you had to pay a royalty on every transistor, and then every IC (both), on every chip produced since 1947 and 1957? And royalties to IBM on every hard drive until 2080? Or whatever price Fleming's hiers and assigns choose to charge for penicillin since 1929? (And every time it looks like it'll fall into the public domain, the terms get extended - after judicious lobbying.) And you can't use <any> of these things for creating new products unless the owners <allow> you to...That's what the world would look like if patent law was run like the copyright law. Where would the level of technology be? 1950? 1960? maybe 1970? It certainly wouldn't be what we now have in 2008!
Copyright (and Patent) are products of mass production. They are nearly self-enforcing in a mass-production environment. The unstoppable problem is that "the digital world" is <not> a mass-production environment. Because it is <inherently> different, mass production rules just don't apply to it. Like it or hate it, that is every bit as real as sunrise.
I understand your economic problems with this reality. I, too, work in a dying profession. I'm a mainframe COBOL programmer. It doesn't matter how good you are when there is little demand for your skills. Or how much you love what you do. But I have to change my skills to survive. I get no continuing payment for work done years ago, nor do people change laws to help <my> plight. Shucks, when <my> jobs get sent overseas, I don't even get the retraining breaks an assembly line worker gets - by law!