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4. Is the issue of orphan material economically important and relevant in practice? Ifyes, what technical, organisational and legal mechanisms could be used to facilitatewider use of this material?Orphan works pose a huge problem for all sorts of people including publishers,broadcasters and authors. TNA has experience of running digitisation projectswhere much of the time and the budget have been spent on rights clearance. TheCommission is right to recognise that the cost of rights clearance could easilyexceed the cost of digitisation. Orphan works are works known or believed to bein copyright and whose copyright owner is unknown and (probably) unknowable.There are plenty of such works in libraries: publishers disappear or are boughtup by others and become untraceable. There are many more in archives. A highproportion of files in The National Archives contain letters from privateindividuals and companies, each of which is a separate copyright work; there is3no prospect whatever in the great of majority of cases of tracing the presentowners of the copyright. Collections of photographs are always an especialproblem, because most images bear no useful data at all and yet they are visuallyattractive and people wish to use them. Very few collections provide adequateinformation on provenance and fewer still on present copyright ownership.One possible solution is a new exception in the Information Society directive(and member states' laws), covering both the reproduction and communicationrights, permitting the reproduction and use of orphan works so long asreasonable efforts are taken (and can be shown to have been taken) to trace thecopyright owner and so long as there are mechanisms in place to requireacknowledgement of copyright and compensation (in the form of a fee at thelevel that would have been payable had the copyright owner been known at thestart) if the copyright owner comes forward with proof of his rights. It is worthnoting that the USA has recognised this problem and the Library of Congresshas been consulting for a study on it. It might be sensible for the Commission todo likewise if it feels that it cannot act immediately.http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/consultation/replies/consult_results/national_archives_uk_a303393.pdf