Interestingly, because of British copyright law, many copyrights will expire in the lifetime of the artists, and they're pushing for an extension akin to the one in the United States.
Personally, I wasn't aware that being able to make a hit was a viable retirement plan. I favor a copyright that expires in the artist's lifetime, and why? Because copyright should encourage innovation. We must protect the investment of time and effort, but at the same time, that protection must be limited to force artists and corporations to create new works. By forcing more into the public domain, we force the original content producers to create more original content to maintain their income, and we give the creators of derivitvate works a more fertile playground to work in.
The only losers in that scenario are the people that try and pawn one good idea off as a lifetime source of income.
