The copyright office has released a proposal to mitigate the orphan works problem. They basically propose that there be limited liability for copyright infringment if a "good faith" effort is made to find the copyright holder. The proposal is a lawyer's wet dream, and Lessig who has worked hard to formulate sensible proposals is rightfully furious. It appears that the reason for rejecting some sort of sensible registry proposal is that the Berne Convention pretty explictly forbids registration as a requirement for copyright. So, hoist by your own petard. The U.S. eager to force the rest of the world to pay us tribute for our valuable copyrightable "expressions" can't very well ask the Europeans to give up the "moral" right to have everything no matter how trivial under copyright. So we continue down the path in which copyright law becomes ever more ridiculous even as it becomes de facto irrelevant.

The ridiculous becomes the irrelevant, I love it. Well said, David. Sort of like the blind leading the dumb. Do you know the Berne Convention's rationale for eliminating the registration requirement?

Since I don't know why the Berne convention eliminated registration, I'll throw that open for discussion. What the convention says is "The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality." Registration is apparently is viewed as a formality.