Public Hearing on Orphan Works

"The October 26, 2009 hearing on orphan works confirmed three long-standing assumptions on these works. First, the orphan work issue is linked to the lack of appropriate attribution of authorship in many creative sectors, especially in the area of visual art and photography. Second, orphan works were mainly qualified as older works where copyright term by far
exceeds their 'commercial' life. Third, the less commercially successful a work proved to be, the more administrative effort was necessary to search for possible authors."