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I like authors. I pay authors. I want authors to go out and create. I enjoy their work. However, books (and photographs and music, and all the other creative endeavors protected by copyright) are not all so excessively precious a commodity that they "deserve" to be sheltered from the Public Domain for a *minimum* of 2-3x as long as patented inventions (and effectively much longer).
We should have a brisk movement of works into publication and just as smooth a movement into the Public Domain. It's really rather disgusting that we still have plenty of the former and none of the latter.
Content creators have been spoiled by the changes to copyright law. It used to be simple...register it or lose it, just like a patent, and it was only yours for a short time. Now authors think that "Life + 50/Life + 70" is absolutely necessary to protect their fragile economic interests and also are deluded enough to think a minimum of two generations beyond them "should" be guaranteed protection to profit from their works.
If you want your work protected from the Public Domain for 100-150 years, you shouldn't allow yourself to be influenced by anything created less than 150 years ago. Because, you're stealing from those other content creators if you do. That's right. If it's "stealing" from content creators to force their works into the Public Domain before their grandkids are old enough to drive...then...they're just as much "stealing" from existing copyrighted media by allowing themselves to be influenced and inspired by their national (and international) culture.
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