Orphan Works
With the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976, the need to register a work to obtain copyright protection was eliminated. Instead, all "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression" now automatically fall into copyright status. As a result, there is no central database to locate and track all copyright-holders (the current database with the U.S. Copyright Office only lists those copyright-holders that voluntarily choose to register their copyright); making it impossible in some cases to contact a copyright-holder for a given work. Those works that fall into this category are often referred to as “orphan works”.
–Matt
A work can become “orphaned” for many reasons. The author could have never been publicly known because the work was published anonymously or the work may have never been traditionally published at all. The identity of the author could have been once known but the information lost over time. Even if the author is known, it may not be possible to determine who inherited the copyright and presently owns it.
The "orphan works" problem hinders economic transactions between copyright-holders and their potential licensees but, more importantly, frustrates the purpose of copyright law which is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
The Copyright Office produced a brilliant report on the problem but proposed a very problematic solution. Since then, a number of bills of been produced to address the problem but none adequately. The current legislation, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008, is the latest attempt. Unlike its predecessors, this bill passed the Senate and is now awaiting passage in the House.
Information about the bill can be found here:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2913/show
