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Frankly why is anything more than life + say 10 or 20 years not sufficient? 50 let alone 70 years past death is way too long. Maybe I am parsimonious, but if I created something I wouldn't expect the copyright to devolve to my children upon my death, or at least not for long. In terms of profits, well they get my financial inheritance, and if I didn't manage my money and the royalties wisely, well that is my darned fault and my kids should have to pay for that. Not some carte blanche ownership of my intellectual works for what probably amounts to their life time and then their kids might own it for a good bit (or all) of their life time as well.
I can see a value to extending copyright for a few years after death. Say for example I was working on a new book, say book 6, of a "popular" series or even just a new book and I died. I very well might have wanted my child to continue that final book and publish it, or maybe I had some vision of how I wanted my works treated in the future, a movie, play, t-shirt, what have you, but I was unable to fullfill it in my life time, but maybe my child could.
For reasons somewhat like that, I do think that copyrights should extend beyond the creators life, but I also think they should be pretty limited past the creators life time.
Or novel idea, how about life long copyright and then the work effectively gets the creative commons treatment for another 50 years. You can repo/use the work, not for commercial gain with citation, but you cannot use the copyrighted material for commercial gain without the consent of the copyright holder.
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