Was it really bit by bit? In most of the world, the Berne convention - signed in 1886 - implemented a copyright length of author's life + 50 years. This was a massive leap for most countries.
Even in the US, the people behind the Sonny Bono Act (aka Mickey Mouse Protection Act) proposed indefinite copyright - MPAA's Jack Valenti actually suggested "forever less one day" to avoid the Constitutional restriction! The life + 50 years was the compromise they could reach.
The contract of copyright is that you'll make works freely available in return for a time-limited monopoly enforced by the people, the demos, through the state.
A perpetual copyright would not be a copyright, there's no reason for the people to support it. If you could pass such an act I think it would show your regime to be something other than a democracy.
They should have done that then made it retroactive. Then the heirs of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Grimm bros. can sue them into the dirt for copyright infringement.
Even in the US, the people behind the Sonny Bono Act (aka Mickey Mouse Protection Act) proposed indefinite copyright - MPAA's Jack Valenti actually suggested "forever less one day" to avoid the Constitutional restriction! The life + 50 years was the compromise they could reach.