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"Orphaned works" is an issue on its own. In my trawling through newspapers and other obscure corners of the web I have come across many works that have been out of print for many years, and whose descendants (and therefore probable copyright owners) are hard if not impossible to find, and even the authors themselves can't be properly identified.
Those which are I can positively identify and are definitely PD Life +70 I have collected and posted here (notably Mark Hellinger). But these are a minority. In one year alone, 1931, more than 150 full length novels were serialised in Australian newspapers with authors named; and another fifty of so without any author identification at all. Some of the authors are well known (eg Arthur Upfield) , but many are vanishingly obscure and probably pseudonymous.
As it stands, these orphan works can be lost forever, regardless of merit, because they are probably still copyright but have no known owner and aren't sufficiently commercial to interest anybody but hobbyists. Who wants to take the risk of re-publishing as an ebook an old newspaper serial by A E Yarra (clearly a pseudonym, named after Melbourne's Yarra river, real name unknown), who might just possible be alive still? Or have litigious descendants, also unknown?
I know in photograph copyright law in some countries there is a provision for "orphaned works". I would like to see something like, "orphaned works, being works whose copyright owners cannot reasonably be identified, date of publication plus 50 years." Not necessarily becoming out of copyright, because the legitimate owner might turn up still, but protected against suit for any breach of copyright up until ownership is proved.
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