Though I am all for creators being compensated well for a time, my view of copyright is much closer to Condorcet's then to Diderot:

A sculpture or painting, while artistic and creative and ostensibly just as "found" out there in the ether as an intellectual creation, nonetheless share with a building or a fern concrete and UNIQUE physical existence. These things cannot be duplicated in any ontologically meaningful way: they will endure as unique things after the creator is gone.

I am not at all against the inheritance of THINGS (and don't dispute that inheritance tax can be onerous and perversely force forfeiture rather than just a "fair cut" for the government to spend on space toilets and the like) - I want to be able to leave tangible things like buildings and shoes and money and big balls of string to my heirs, but intellectual creations like songs and books and articles and movies are essentially INFORMATION, and after a fair period of compensation to allow the creator(s) to pay some bills and buy chewing gum and Diet Coke, INFORMATION belongs to the world.

INFORMATION needs to be freely shared so that people can build upon it and mix and match it with reckless abandon because that is what people do, and need to be able to do to be free and creative and happy. Once ideas are out in the world, they take on a life of their own, and it can even be argued they have no meaning other than in relationship to people. Sure the creator has his/her own relationship, and for a reasonable time that relationship should be honored to the point of primacy, but the longer that work is out there interacting with the world, the less it belongs to the creator and the more it belongs to that world.

The death of the creator seems like a VERY REASONABLE AND NATURAL point to turn that idea or set of ideas over to the world for modification, renewal and unfettered dissemination.

Information shouldn't be incarcerated for more than one life sentence - it's cruel and unusual.

UPDATE
Boulder's Daily Camera, Houston Chronicle, Salt Lake Tribune, and HoosierTimes.com all carried the AP story.