I don't see it. As long as I'm reasonably easy to be found, the Orphan Works rules do not apply. The author of nearly any work on BC, or at least their pseudonym, can easily be found through Google. I see a lot of hysterical arguments against this bill and a lot of doomsday pronouncements but it's a tempest in a teacup as far as I can see. No one here is likely to be affected by this law. Putting your stuff out on a free website like this exposes your work to many more sorts of possible thieves than can be believed. And that's with current law, this law would not change that situation.

It's mostly being passed as a liability shield for universities, museums and documentary makers who want to do the due diligence the law requires to use works where no copyright owner is known. That means spending money to look for the copyright owner; if the owner is found, the work is not orphaned and permission must be gotten for use; if the owner is not found then the person who spent money looking for them is allowed to use the orphan work without fearing liability for copyright infringement if a long lost owner does finally show up. such an owner could reclaim ownership and stop unauthorized use but could not sue.

Corbis is a visual archive of copyrighted works, a way to make it easy to find you if you're a photographer or visual artist, mostly. The law does not require registration with Corbis, that's a red herring. In fact, most of the arguments I've read online against this bill are full of red herrings, strawmen, slippery slopes, excluded middles, appeals to emotion, ad hominem, non post hoc and almost every other sort of logical fallacy you might think of. I've yet to find one cogent anti argument that sticks to facts and uses logic, and most of the anti-arguments refer to each other for support.

Ever wonder why no one much reprints many of those old pulp magazine stories? In many cases, it's because the publishing company went out of business, records were lost and no once can find the copyright owners. Same is true even more so for early films and many, many, many photographic works. That's what this is about.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.