‘One of the consequences of extending the term of copyright in many types of copyright has been a massive increase in the number of works in which copyright subsists whose owners cannot be identified or found. Such works are known as “orphan works” and HM government claims that there are some 91 million of them in the UK alone. Because their owners cannot be traced orphan works cannot lawfully be reproduced even for preservation. Consequently, works recorded on such media as celluloid film and magnetic tape may be lost for ever. Much of that work is culturally important and some of it is of considerable scientific interest such as patient records in studies of malaria. In Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth Professor Hargreaves described the problem of orphan works as “the starkest failure of the copyright framework to adapt.”‘
NIPC Law, 3rd November 2014
Source: www.nipclaw.blogspot.co.uk
