Today's word of the day is Orphan Works, copyrighted works for which it is difficult or impossible to locate the copyright holder.

Some of you might remember the Orphan Works Bill from a couple years ago during the last wave of copyright reform legislation. The bill included a controversial provision to carve out a copyright exception for "orphan works" whose owners couldn't be reasonably identified. The number of orphan works has been growing annually since 1976, when the United States changed from a limited-term opt-in copyright system to an opt-out system that remains in effect, potentially, for generations (currently the creator's lifetime plus 70 years).

Every story, email, or blog post you write automatically falls under copyright protection. So does every picture you draw and every photograph you take. Since everything you do is brilliant, and since everyone is still entitled to the standard "15 minutes of fame" treatment, it stands to reason that somebody will eventually want to share your words or images with the world, sometime before the copyright expires in the year 2078 or later. If the work has your name on it, it might be relatively easy for somebody to find you and obtain your permission to reprint or adapt your stuff. If all they have is an excerpt that doesn't include your name, they might find you by doing a search for the work online or in a database of similar material. But after that, the search may become too time-consuming or expensive to be worth their while.

When orphan works go out of print, or if they're not widely distributed in the first place, they may become lost to history. They are less likely to be reprinted for fear that some copyright holder will someday step forward with a fat infringement suit. This mainly concerns big publishers and other corporate interests, but individual book creators like me might also need to obtain rights for a poem, picture, or song lyrics to be included in a larger story--and it's a real hassle if these turn out to be orphans.

Photographers, graphic designers, children's book illustrators, and other visual artists had issues with the Orphan Works Bill because their works are most likely to be circulated without attribution and appropriated under the proposed law without recourse and with only nominal recompense. Authors and musicians would have been affected as well, but to a lesser extent, because text and lyrics can be searched for more easily than pixels.

The original Orphan Works Bill fizzled out in 2006, but now it's back in the form of two similar versions introduced in April 2008 in the House and Senate. Some of the old concerns have been addressed and new ones introduced. There's no telling yet whether the current bill will be defeated, amended, or passed as written, but the potential remains for some big changes to our collective rights and protections.

I'll post updates if there are further developments with the bill, but authors and illustrators should keep this issue on their radar screens.