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I support copyrights for limited periods of time, but if I had to choose between no copyright and eternal copyright, I would choose no copyright, and do so with no regrets. Copyright isn't a natural right. It is a government granted exclusive right to copy for a limited period of time. It is a deal: in exchange for these works eventually entering the public domain, the author gets exclusive rights to the work. It's the same thing with patents. It patents were eternal, advancement would come to a stop. People don't have to patent their inventions, they can protect them themselves by treating them as trade secrets. The risk is that they won't remain secret.
Our culture is based on the public domain. As it is, nothing will enter the public domain until 2019, and that is assuming copyright isn't extended even further. Copyright does seem to get extended to please Disney, but the irony is that many of the Disney movies were based on public domain works. Eternal copyright would be as stagnating as eternal patent would.
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