Long copyrights serve to severely limit access by the public to creative works  Because copyrights are so long, they often result in severely limiting access to some works by anyone. Many “orphan works”, whose copyright holders are unknown, cannot be made available online or in other free format due to copyright protection. This is a major problem, considering that 40% of all books fall into this category. [1] A mix of confusion over copyright ownership and unwillingness of owners to release their works, often because it would not be commercially viable to do so, means that only 2% of all works currently protected by copyright are commercially available. [2] The public is robbed of a vast quantity of artistic work, often simply because no one can or is willing to publish it even in a commercial context. Reducing copyright length would go a long way to freeing this work for public consumption.  [1] Keegan, V. “Shorter Copyright Would Free Creativity”. The Guardian. 7 October 2009,   [2] ibid