The future of the orphan works proposal that seemed like a reasonable approach earlier in the season is now rather in doubt. The problem of the visual arts now looms rather larger than it did early on. That is, the search for the holder of a copyright in a drawing, photo, print, sculpture, or other image is much more difficult than for textual or titled works, which can be entered in searchable registries. Printed textiles are a particular concern. They are often counterfeited abroad and imported back into the U.S., raising the possibility that the copies, lacking a copyright notice, will be represented as orphans and copied in turn, with each copy then becoming susceptible to further copying. One solution might be to confine the effect of the rule, for now, to textual works (including music). This is, however, not very satisfying since there are so many images combined with text.

My take is that the support of my colleagues for the "reasonable search" concept notwithstanding, there are real problems here. Anyone care to respond?