Orphan Works Copyright Issues

An orphan work is a kind of work that the user is unable to obtain the authorization because of difficult to find the person who has the right. On the scope of the orphan works legislative circles and theorists dispute mainly focus on whether orphan works include unidentified works or unpublished works. After analyze the definition of orphan works, we could see that unidentified works and unpublished works are all part of the orphan works. The existing method for determining the range of orphan works including reasonable diligence finding and the compulsory license. The former which has the superiority of lower costs and be not dependent on copyright management system is better than the latter, as well as it has the defect that it can not determine the scope clearly. But this can be overcome by refine the method of the reasonable diligence finding mode.Existing usage patterns of orphan works including restrictions the relief mode and the compulsory licensing models, two modes have their own strengths, and by the use of orphan works has been published into nonprofit and for-profit use the two modes combined that non-profit use the corresponding limit relief usage patterns, for-profit use the corresponding compulsory licensing usage patterns, in addition to be achieved through the aging solution to the question of the use of unpublished orphan works.Usage patterns and the use of compulsory licensing restricting relief modes correspond to protected mode and prior compensation after the escrow protection mode. Ex-post compensation mode with its user-friendly features of its features of easy to be compensated more for-profit use of more suitable for non-profit use, escrow mode.Copyright collective management organization with its strong market sensitivity, high efficiency, and low cost make it relative to the administrative agencies to be more suitable for managing orphan works. Value assessment and filing of orphan works are orphan works management activities need to pay attention.China’s Copyright Law loopholes and lack of the orphan works issue, there are many omissions of the provisions of the copyright of the draft law on orphan works. To address these deficiencies, we propose a method for determining the establishment of orphan works, the obligation to establish the use of people, to set the protection mode and select the appropriate management of the suggestions for improvement.