ABSTRACT
Egalitarian access to information is a core ideal of a democratic society. Recog - nizing the fundamental right to participate in the ongoing cultural, social, and political dialogue, the framers of the U.S. Constitution ensured this access by providing that “Congress shall have the Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Cl. 8, hereinafter the “copyright clause”). This notion of egalitarian access to information is crucially important because access facilitates the exchange of ideas through an ongoing dialogue that enables democracy itself (Herrington, 2011). As both users and creators of copyrighted materials, technical communicators experience this importance of access to information, copyrighted or otherwise, in their day-to-day activities. On the one hand, technical communicators in academia use this access to copyrighted works to comment on and critique various communicative structures. On the other hand, technical communicators working in industry access these materials in order to create new communication products (e.g., user manuals and online help systems) used by a range of clients or consumers. In both cases, technical communicators must obtain the appropriate permissions to use copyrighted works to create new materials should the intended uses exceed the allowable exceptions to or limitations of copyright. The rise of digital media, however, has created new contexts that can hinder these processes, and one such situation involves orphan works, or works for which the copyright holder cannot be identified and located.
