Few people in America today want to cheat content creators out of hard earned money. People who produce creative works deserve to be compensated for their efforts. However, current copyright law gives exclusive rights to creative works for an excessive amount of time. For example, consider a song that is published in 2011. The copyright on this song will be valid (under certain assumptions) until 70 years after the artist's death (2081 at the earliest). This amount of time is excessive.
The Copyright Act of 1790 established copyrights for 14 years with an option to renew for another 14 years. Copyright durations should be much closer to the Copyright Act of 1790 than to today's legislation.