I haven't seen a lot of great examples of where orphaned works present a problem.
I know of a local photo store that will restore family photos without worries about the copyright owner of the photos. It's hard to imagine that such a service is violating copyright protection. All it is doing is restoring that photo to the level of quality it had when it was originally taken and returning the restored copy to the person who had the original. Fair Use ought to easily cover that process because the store is not using the photo--it is only restoring it. Now, if the store decided to advertise a "before and after" promotion with the photo, there might be reasons for concern from a copyright standpoint.
A museum, given old photos by a family, probably can also use such photos, under the Fair Use provisions, for a historical montage of the town without concerns for being sued by the original photographer. The exhibit is about the town and any single photograph is part of a larger work with original material provided by the museum. Of course, one could ask why the museum cannot obtain similar photos through established sources, such as the local newspaper and government offices. Things can get dicey if the museum wants to promote an exhibit of a local photographer without having permissions to use that photographer's works.
The number of honest legitimate uses for orphaned works is fairly small compared to the less honest marketplace that is looking for a way to make money off the copyrighted works of others without having to pay for the right to use those works. The tricky part is crafting language that provides a valuable means of showcasing works that have been forgotten over time while maintaining protection for the creative people who ought to profit from their work. Although there has been some "sky is falling" panic, changes to copyright law are things to be concerned about.
Keep in mind that your concerns, as a writer, differ considerably from those of a photographer or artist. The future market for most written works, that could potentially be orphaned, is much smaller than that of photos and paintings. Artists and photographers have to worry far more about their works being amassed in collections sold either on CDs/DVDs or encompassed into paysites specializing on their types of images, be they clip art collections or themed paysites.
While it seems very reasonable on the surface, for the law to require that a site cease using a photographer's images upon notice of a violation, photographers routinely can find their works infringed on hundreds and thousands of sites. For every site they get to comply, there are many more being created, sometimes by the same people that infringed them in the first place. By altering laws, to allow use of orphaned works after an unspecified effort to contact the copyright holder, Pandora's Box becomes opened. Many shady paysites crop out identifying information from photos and that suddenly makes an image, which used to be easily be traced to the copyright holder, an orphan. Today, there is no relief available to use such images. If a paysite cannot readily show ownership of the images, that site risks an expensive copyright lawsuit. Creating an "orphan" category of copyrights relaxes the risks of using images whose source is not readily identifiable. While you might believe that great diligence will be expected to find the copyright owner, the earlier attempts to craft such laws didn't define what an acceptable effort was or require proof of such efforts. It would take court proceedings to determine what those acceptable levels are. Once it's defined, it will be easy for crooks to claim that they did all that effort when they never did anything. The field of writing doesn't have the same levels of concerns. There aren't a lot of paysites offering free copyrighted material to read without the writer's name on the works.
How many valid needs are there for orphaned works?
I know of a local photo store that will restore family photos without worries about the copyright owner of the photos. It's hard to imagine that such a service is violating copyright protection. All it is doing is restoring that photo to the level of quality it had when it was originally taken and returning the restored copy to the person who had the original. Fair Use ought to easily cover that process because the store is not using the photo--it is only restoring it. Now, if the store decided to advertise a "before and after" promotion with the photo, there might be reasons for concern from a copyright standpoint.
A museum, given old photos by a family, probably can also use such photos, under the Fair Use provisions, for a historical montage of the town without concerns for being sued by the original photographer. The exhibit is about the town and any single photograph is part of a larger work with original material provided by the museum. Of course, one could ask why the museum cannot obtain similar photos through established sources, such as the local newspaper and government offices. Things can get dicey if the museum wants to promote an exhibit of a local photographer without having permissions to use that photographer's works.
The number of honest legitimate uses for orphaned works is fairly small compared to the less honest marketplace that is looking for a way to make money off the copyrighted works of others without having to pay for the right to use those works. The tricky part is crafting language that provides a valuable means of showcasing works that have been forgotten over time while maintaining protection for the creative people who ought to profit from their work. Although there has been some "sky is falling" panic, changes to copyright law are things to be concerned about.
Keep in mind that your concerns, as a writer, differ considerably from those of a photographer or artist. The future market for most written works, that could potentially be orphaned, is much smaller than that of photos and paintings. Artists and photographers have to worry far more about their works being amassed in collections sold either on CDs/DVDs or encompassed into paysites specializing on their types of images, be they clip art collections or themed paysites.
While it seems very reasonable on the surface, for the law to require that a site cease using a photographer's images upon notice of a violation, photographers routinely can find their works infringed on hundreds and thousands of sites. For every site they get to comply, there are many more being created, sometimes by the same people that infringed them in the first place. By altering laws, to allow use of orphaned works after an unspecified effort to contact the copyright holder, Pandora's Box becomes opened. Many shady paysites crop out identifying information from photos and that suddenly makes an image, which used to be easily be traced to the copyright holder, an orphan. Today, there is no relief available to use such images. If a paysite cannot readily show ownership of the images, that site risks an expensive copyright lawsuit. Creating an "orphan" category of copyrights relaxes the risks of using images whose source is not readily identifiable. While you might believe that great diligence will be expected to find the copyright owner, the earlier attempts to craft such laws didn't define what an acceptable effort was or require proof of such efforts. It would take court proceedings to determine what those acceptable levels are. Once it's defined, it will be easy for crooks to claim that they did all that effort when they never did anything. The field of writing doesn't have the same levels of concerns. There aren't a lot of paysites offering free copyrighted material to read without the writer's name on the works.