I’ve been reading and thinking about this issue for the last few days. My thoughts are that skillful copyright registration will virtually eliminate a work falling into the “orphan” classification. Of course, the first thing I hear is that many artists cannot afford to register the copyright on every piece, which is a reasonable objection. However, if they can’t afford to register each piece, they probably CAN afford to register groups of works (published or unpublished) under logical groupings.

The goal would be to make sure all the work would be found during a “reasonable good-faith search” - so, perhaps registering sets using a web site URL with images of each piece in the set as the registration name would work. For instance, www.artistname.com/registrationset would be a page with images of each piece of work contained in that set, making it easier for a reasonable good-faith search to find works that were registered as part of a compilation. The “registrationset” title would need to be logically descriptive of the set of work – which will be challenging, but far from impossible.

When artists say they can’t afford the time or the money to register work at all, I respond “so, how does the proposed change in the law make any difference?” Right now, if a work is unregistered and gets infringed, the limitations on damages are practically the same as under the proposed legislation.

I’m optimistic that new registries and technologies for visual arts may become available – motivated by the fear of works becoming orphaned. For instance, Google might offer a registry for visual works with a $5/piece fee (or even free) - much less than the $45/registration at the © office. Sure, a Google registration won’t have the legal protections of a registered copyright, but it might become a de facto standard for a “reasonable good-faith search.”

Finally, motivating artists to do a better job of marketing themselves (thus making it harder for a reasonable good-faith search to FAIL in the attempt to find the creator of a work) is a good thing for everyone.

I am not sure that I understand the comment to the post, but it appears to rely on a fundamentally erroneous assumption. There is no technology currently available anywhere in the world that permits searching of visual images, particularly outside of the photographic context. (keep in mind that most visual art is not digital -- for example, paintings, cartoons, and textile designs are created on paper). Without such technology, a manual search is pointless - for example, a single wallpaper company will have thousands of copyrighted abstract designs. Further, a text-based search, based on a description of the design, does not work as a practical matter, because no two people will describe a design in the same manner. Moreover, visual art is not medium-specific - just because the design is on wallpaper doesn't mean the creator was the wallpaper company - the wallpaper could be a knock-off of a textile design, a dinnerplate design, a wrapping paper design, and so on - as a result, even if there was a searchable database of wallpaper designs, that doesn't solve the problem.