Last week I finished working on OrphanWorks.org, a site that helps people tell the Copyright Office about the difficulties of navigating our legal system when rights holders cannot be found. Thanks to Seth, Chris, Elly, and Greg for the technical bits. The words came from Holmes:

"For designers, academics, artists, musicians, and filmmakers, using copyrighted works can be a huge headache. It can be impossible to find out if a particular work is still under copyright or not. And even when people would happily pay to use a copyrighted photo, passage, or video clip, it's often impossible (or extremely costly) to find the copyright holder. When this happens, everybody loses. Artists can't realize their creative vision, academics can't clearly communicate their ideas, and copyright holders don't get paid. Even worse, important pieces of our culture get needlessly locked away."

.:link:.