Personally, I think we should go back to the original 7 years with the option for a 7 year renewal for copyright. After 14 years your work becomes public domain.
There are plenty of musicians who are still performing and recording songs they wrote 28 years ago, much less 14.
The medium of which something is created isn't the issue. Give me a hammer, nails, and a bunch of wood, and I'll give you an absolute disaster of construction. Give the same tools and materials to a skilled carpenter, and he'll build a good home that will last for decades. How long after he builds the home should his ownership of it expire? Seven years? Fourteen years?
If you buy the home, you're usually buying all rights to it, with no time limitations. If you want to have the freedom to do whatever you want with a piece of music, you can do the same thing: buy all rights. That's what Michael Jackson did with the Beatles' music.
Chuck Berry is still a very bitter man today because he got royally screwed on his contracts, and didn't own the copyright to his works. The Stones and countless other groups made millions of dollars recording songs he wrote, and he didn't get a dime in royalties.
I started dealing with copyright issues in 1978 and, along the way, was threatened, extorted and strong-armed. There were and still are plenty of whores in photography who will sell their work at ridiculously low prices and throw in all rights for free. I've had many, many agencies ask me to do work for them, but also ask that I cave in and give them all rights to the photograph. They could have worked with one of the whores, but they wanted the level of photography that I delivered, yet didn't want to pay the price. They'd stomp their feet, or sometimes even say, "you give us all rights on this job or you'll never work in this town again." Yeah? Well, * you, pal. This isn't "On the Waterfront," and you're not Johnny Friendly.
These agencies used almost verbatim the arguments I've seen in this thread. They were trying to sidestep the copyright issue so as to more fully line their pockets. For them it was a matter of greed at the expense of the photographers they were dealing with.
I didn't expect the same from people on this forum, though. I'm really and truly shocked.