Current law means that the people who own the rights to a song own it, essentially, forever. They influence and steal as much as they are influenced and stolen from. This sharing of ideas, this give and take of concepts and art is central to the human experience. We call it culture. Culture is instinctual.
Culture is participatory.
Any distinction between producer and consumer in music and art and literature and film is artificial. Clamping down on the distribution and dissemination of art, literature, learning and music is dehumanizing, and now it's enshrined in law. Now here comes the backlash. If copyright is dead, then our culture sure as hell isn't going to suck up to it anymore. Copyright law was intended to benefit both the owners of intellectual property and the general public, a carefully considered compromise that lets the individual and the civilization both benefit.