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The problem is that owners are often hard to find.  This is especially true as the decades pass.  Owners die, and copyright passes to heirs.  But there is no reliable record of copyright ownership.  As a result, it is often impossible to find anyone to ask for permission. By opening up this treasure trove of orphan works, Google Books may make a truly major contribution to nearly every field of writing imaginable.

The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google, arguing that by scanning copyrighted books into their database, and by distributing snippets from them, Google violated their copyrights.  Google disagreed, arguing that its copying was fair use.  But before the issues could be determined by a court, the parties settled. The settlement was, characteristically for Google, a masterstroke of creativity.  In return for modest payments to Guild and AAP members, Google obtained copyright immunity for its Google Books project.  But the settlement sought to do more — Google would be free to include orphan works in its database — even though the authors of these works, by definition, were not represented in the settlement negotiations.  Royalties would be directed to the owners of orphan works if they later surfaced.

The federal judge overseeing the dispute, however, rejected this settlement, in part because he didn’t like that it required authors to “opt-out” of it rather than “opt-in.”

A better option is for Congress to step in.  Legislation has been pending in Congress for several years that would ease the orphan works problem.  If passed, it would allow those who have made a reasonable search to use that work. And if the owner later surfaces, the user need only pay a reasonable license fee.  So under these revised rules, Google Books could include orphan works, and be assured that it would be liable only for the fair value of a license — exactly the type of compensation that they envisioned in the settlement.   And, importantly, firms other than Google –perhaps public libraries — could do so as well.

however, the orphan works legislation has been bottled up in Congress, due mostly to the objections of commercial photographers, who fear that the special difficulties of finding owners of visual works will deprive them of fair compensation.