This new Orphan Works legislation proposes
a change in U.S. copyright that would (indirectly)
require artists, illustrators, photographers, and
any creative individual to actively maintain and
defend their copyright by registering each and every
work with privatized registrars. Failure to do so
would leave everything you've ever created as an
artist up for grabs by anyone who wanted to copy,
reproduce, create derivative works of, or flat out
steal your work since the act defines an "orphan work"
as any work where the author is unidentifiable or
unlocatable, and applies to both published and
unpublished works, U.S. and foreign, regardless of
age.