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There are several types of copyright - according to the type of activity covered.
The artist holds the copyright only on her/his work, but a publisher can prevent her/him to print it by her/himself.
I do not understand why the artist has to have 95 years of copyright after his/her death - the purpose of the copyright, as indicated in the discussion preceeding the Berne Convention in 1860, was to allow him a source of income. The 20 years after was for his relatives. Nowadays, a book brings almost instant financial success, unlike in 1860 where one author could die in misery before his book written 30 years before could sustain him financially.
The copyright is against the natural order of things - the humans succeeded being a social species, that means they shared, from food to battles. The key to success was sharing information. All animals living in colonies developed a language to share information. The ants leave a chemical trace to the food source, so others could speedily go there and bring it home before their competitors. Prey animals have a warning system announcing their kin of predators around.
Most times, the authors live a golden slavery - at a first glance they are independent and rich and creative, but if one digs a bit, he'll see that they are obliged to issue a book a year or every second year (the first major author I've heard that did this was Jules Verne whose editor Hetzel wanted from him 2 books a year). He can, of course, leave this golden cage, but then he'll lose the resources of publicity (and favourable "critics") a publisher has. This is one very negative aspect of copyrights, which actually forced people to create garbage only to fulfil the contracts. The music industry is probably the best example of this institutionalised garbageism.
On the other hand, in the true advancing technologies, we have patents, which end 20 years after filing. And the industry flourish (they also have some specific issues, like the well-known patent trolls), and they also have to pay a tax or else the patent is invalidated. In many countries one does not pay for copyright.
If the prevention of knowledge transmission will succeed, then the humanity may be in danger - yes, we did manage to destroy all natural enemies, like tigers, wolves, bears, sharks, whatever... but we will fall prey to our own kin. We are supposed to love him, but he should, too, in return.
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