The Eldred act was proposed by Lawrence Lessig as a way of getting the majority of old works into public domain. It requires that a $1 every five years be paid for works that have been published 50 years or more ago.
This basically will allow the published works that no-one care enough about to be returned to the public domain, and works that some one does care enough about will have an uptodate contact information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-Domain-Enhancement-Act
TakeDown.NET -> “Copyright-Term-Reform/Eldred”