There is new legislation in the works to dilute the value of copyrighted works by placing special conditions on "ophaned works", works whose ownership cannot be readily determined. For somebody that has copyrighted their works with the copyright office, there isn't going to be a problem with their works being protected. Any reasonable search will uncover that the works are protected.

The real issue is is for all the works that automatically have copyright protection. That includes blogs, photos, and media placed on websites, and various other works that otherwise aren't being specifically copyrighted by the people that create them.

The ugly side of the legislation is that it is specifically giving corporations a free reign for stealing works that do not belong to them as well as creating new companies to essentially extort money from artists to protect their work. Existing copyright laws prevent them from doing that. Right now, everything is automatically copyrighted. Just because it may not be immediately apparent who the owner of a work is, there is no reason for a anybody to be assuming rights to that work simply because they don't know who created it. Unscrupulous individuals will remove readme files associated with works, crop out copyright notices, and do various things to make it hard to ascertain who the original work's owner is and claim rights, under the orphan legislation, that they otherwise could never have. Even though this type of legislation shouldn't pass into law, it's disconcerting that it is being discussed and worked on. That's because there are companies that will profit from it by being able to use works that they did not have to pay for.

To prevent this sort of legislation from going too far, make your opinions known by writing to your legislators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
[Admittedly, this belongs in the copyright forum, but it is important enough not to be buried there.]

The problem
http://mag.awn.com/?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605

More background
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Orphan_works_legislation

Judiciary Committee review
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=427

Copyright office report
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/

An unwanted compromise by the ASMP
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2008/orphan_update.php