The United States Copyright office is seeking public comment on ““orphan works,” i.e., copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to locate.” This is an excellent opportunity to make your voice heard and bring about positive change. Need convincing? Go here to Lawrence Lessig’s blog post. Please read this US Copyright web page carefully on how to contact them. You can also goto eldred.cc and learn more about this issue and how to comment.
On a personal note, I mix a lot of audio for this site. [ duh. 
] Many times I wish I could use a piece of sound for my podcast but don’t. This is because I can not determine if the audio is under copyright or in the public domain. Not to mention what the intentions of the copyright holder are. Can I use the work for my not for profit podcast? Without rock solid info I don’t bother using it.
Creative Commons licenseses solves most of this. I put my audio under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 licenses. This makes it very easy for other people to know what to do with my audio.
Unfortunately tons of audio, video, text and other intellectual property exists in a legal limbo, unusable legally. This stuff is called Orphan Works.
Recently someone contacted me and asked if I would like a free cd, and or downloads, of some cool leftist speakers. Lots of very good content I would love to use for my shows. But I had to decline because I don’t have a legal guarantee that I have permission to use it.
This persons response was, [I paraphrase], “I’ve been in this business for three years with no problems. If some lawyer sends me a “Cease and Desist” letter I’ll stop. Until then I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.”
Why don’t I just do this too? Only a few hundred downloads of my audio per week. No biggy. No huge loss of money to any copyright holder? Good chance that nothing would happen….
I only use audio I created and appropriate Creative Commons licensed work to:
1) Prevent lawyers from having a reason to threat or sue me.
2) Save $$ I don’t have for legal bills
3) To set a good example of how creative people can keep the power!
Down the line I may have to deal with someone making money off my work. In essence not honoring my Creative Commons license. If so I hope organizations like the EFF got my back! One day there will be a court case defending our right to share using the Creative Commons License.