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That's the problem with the copyright concept in the world of abundance. It was designed to control access and and maintain ownership in a world of scarcity. The reason was laudable and practical, to encourage new production of products whose cost to produce was extremely front-end loaded.
But it's an artificial rule. That didn't matter when when it was just readjusting ownership among entities, who were all bound by the the same limits of scarcity, but now...
There is no scarcity in most of the copyright world. Abundance is starting to rule. And that is trumping the artificial rules. I guess the only answer, as I stated earlier, is marketing (or propaganda, if you will). But the people in the digital realm are much more knowledgable about the implications of abundance, and won't listen to blatant self-serving lies.
So you can't sell them on long copyright. You can sell artists need to eat, but you can't sell that for artists that are dead. That won't fly, because nobody else in the world gets that, and the populace just won't buy that. That's the big media's problem, they won't let go to anything. And the result is that they no longer have any moral standing among the people they're trying to convince. The result, (as MacCauley prediction in 1842), is a total degradation of respect for all copyright, even that which is beneficial.
Of course saying it's beneficial is a viewpoint. Since nothing goes away in the digital world, the result of reasonable copyright length would be a steadily growing public domain. And then you end up with the same abundance problem. Why pay money when you can get other (older) variants, for free? Why should I read Jordan, when I could read, say Henry Kuttner (died 1958), for free?
The problem will not be cured by law, no matter how draconian, it's inherent to the system now. The system is not going away...
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