Paradoxically, it may be an assortment of EU interests which may suffer in the long run from an increase in US-style copyright term extensions. If a host of influential think tanks, economists (Milton Friedman) and business people (Steve Forbes) and legal scholars (Larry Lessig, David Boyle) are correct in their view, corporate welfare handouts in the form of "continual extensions" (i.e. Sonny Bono copyright Term Extension Act) not only reward bigger market players at the expense of more innovative smaller players, but they may constitute a highly unconstitutional trend in lawmaking.
Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, noted that "Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever," but that since was "informed by staff that such a chance would violate the Constitution" (r. Wikipedia).
If, as this growing chorus of voices suggest, innovation is jeopardized through such "tragedies of the anti-commons," then the US constitutional injunction and purpose behind copyright in the first place, is violated: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts through the granting of limited monopolies". Regardless of whether limited means "forever minus one day" as the Jack Valenti's of the world would have it (technically, true, commensically ridiculous), if innovation is jeopardized, extension-theory is on zero-legitimacy ground.
See wired magazines article...
Europeans in general have even greater cause for concern since the European RIAA-equivalent lobby has no such constitutional inconvenience to hamper them in their quite possibly succesful drive for perpetual intellectual property rights.
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