When a user would like to make use of a copyrighted work in a way that does not fall under fair use, but the copyright owner or their whereabouts is unknown, the user is dealing with an orphan work. This is a tricky situation because the user is still liable for any violation of copyright law, and often, users elect not to use the work at all. This deprives the public of any scholarly or artistic advancement that use of the work might have inspired.
From Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain:
The costs of an inadequate system of access to orphan works are huge: needlessly disintegrating films, prohibitive costs for libraries, incomplete and spotted histories, thwarted scholarship, digital libraries put on hold, delays to publication. In the cases where the work is truly an orphan work, those costs are tragic because they are completely unnecessary. This report describes the orphan works problem, and offers a proposal to fix it.
Adapted from Black’s Law Dictionary 9th ed.
A term used to refer to works which are not in public domain, but the copyright holder cannot be discovered or contacted.