"IP was supposed to aid creative expression, not stifle it!" IP is supposed to benefit creators not plagiarists. Copying someone elses' work is not creative expression.
All art is derivative, originality is a myth.
The only pillaging here is being done by politicians and lobbyists who are preventing new developments from being adapted and evolved. The creative contribution of Hendrix's recording of "All Along the Watchtower" is something many of us appreciate, but we've also seen glimpses into what sort of creations can be made with it (e.g., Battlestar Galactica's adaptation at the end of Season 3) and we're now being denied that by decisions like these.
The problem is that the music industry is too engrossed with its 'potential profits' that it can't find any 'actual profits'. They'll sell the licence to a 10 second segment of a song for a million dollars, which no one will buy and the record will get more obscure and less in demand just because the licencee could make huge money and their work is integral on that licence.
This could be resolved simply by saying the licence fee is $1 per unit sold per year. A song that sells a million copies in its first year maybe should have a licence fee of a million dollars for valid reasons. A 40 year old recording that shipped 10 units last month, definitely isn't worth a million, and $120 in a licence fee is probably the most money the artist or studio has seen from it in a long time.
I'm sorry, but the abolition of slavery took a civil war to resolve and it didn't have nearly as much money entangled in it as the copyright industry does. So unless The Pirate Bay launches an army, I don't think copyright is going anywhere. It would be more commendable to actually get the clauses exploited by corporations for (and sometimes against) their own gain fixed.
Time limited copyright (say 10 years) almost certainly is beneficial, perpetual copyright is harmful both culturally and in the long run economically.
Perpetual copyright on copyrights as they are today would cause a great amount of work to be lost due to the owners greed and stupidity.
As per my suggestion on licencing a work could become free-use much sooner than the copyright period expires. Anything with no units shipped would mean its a free license.
As I've said elsewhere, and originally, I'm in favour of 20 years and extensions for derivative works, and perhaps then only on the right to produce derivatives and on no other rights like reproduction.
Copyright should be granted for free for a short amount of time.
Once that is up, the copyright holder should have the option of extending the copyright. They should be made to pay for this right, since the extension of the copyright only really benefits them.
This would allow copyright holders to keep a hold of stuff that is obviously profitable, at the same time the vast majority of stuff would enter the public domain.
(It'd be interesting there if the extension were not to 70 years, but to 170 years; much of the music industry's jazz catalogue would retroactively be plagiarism, because it frequently quotes from out of copyright jazz standards, and even older folk songs.)