The fate of orphaned works
I just spent over an hour trying to figure out who holds the copyright on a campaign poster in our Campaign Literature Archive. The answer boils down to "nobody". The political committee that produced it was dissolved decades ago and did not explicitly pass the copyright on to another organization. (I highly doubt that as they wrapped up their final financial disclosure forms, it even crossed anyone's mind to consider the disbursement of their intellectual property.) There is no "default heir" as there would be if it were an individual. But lack of a copyright owner doesn't mean lack of a copyright! The copyright is still technically in effect, and the poster won't enter the public domain until 120 years after it's creation. And so the upshot is, a researcher is unable to put an image of the picture into an article. And neither will anyone else until the end of this century.
In the course of following the copyright trail, I did run across the following prescient speech:
"I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot.... Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."
Thomas Babington Macaulay MP to the House of Commons, 1841