Orphan works

The Google Settlement grows more bamboozlingly complex by the day as we press on into unknown territory, not just with our imaginations, but our writerly hopes for recompense for our work. In TWUC chair Erna Parris's most recent letter to members, among all the complexities she mentions the problem of "orphan works"--that is, Google's scooping up of works whose authors cannot be found.
This could be a rather enormous category, when you think about it--despite our big brother atmosphere of social networking. Orphan works--books, words that outlive their authors, or whose authors have long quit trying to make money "opting out" of the publishing world, and who knows, going off to live out their days in Meat Cove or Harrietsfield or Ecum Secum, driving school buses or cutting firewood or....fill in the blanks: all the sundry things writers do to actually make a buck.
Orphan works: it has a ring, don't you think? A reminder that words outlast their makers. Which reminds me, too, that what we say in emails is there forever, floating around who knows where in cyberspace. Electronica truly giving, well, legs and longevity to stories, words, snippets, and, oh my, blogs.
Anyway, my friends, embrace an orphan if you know of one. Read it, lend it to close friends, and when they return it, keep it on a cosy shelf. A bientot.