[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by NVash

It makes no sense. All this time and many of my favorite books have yet to become ebooks. Many of them arent even around anymore, its hard enough to find the books but then the publishers are missing, the authors vanished off the Earth, what of those books?

There's some legal support for your point:

The law grants copyright holders a powerful monopoly in their expressive works. It should not also afford them windfall damages for the publication of the sorts of works that they themselves would never publish, or worse, grant them a power of indirect censorship.

(Judge Marcus, 11th circuit court of appeals, concurring w/opinion on Suntrust v. Houghton-Mifflin, a.k.a. "The Wind Done Gone" case.)

... file sharing for the purposes of sampling music prior to purchase or space-shifting to store purchased music more efficiently might offer a compelling case for fair use. Likewise, a defendant who used the new file-sharing networks in the technological interregnum before digital media could be purchased legally, but who later shifted to paid outlets, might also be able to rely on the defense.

(Judge Gertner, District court of Massachusetts, Sony v Tenenbaum)

There's some legal support for the claim that failing to exploit a market leans towards fair use if copies or derivatives are made.

But "some legal support" does not mean "grab some orphan works and set yourself up with a publishing company/torrent collection," unless you happen to have some very sharp IP lawyers close at hand.