The role of copyright or related rights collecting societies in legal solutions regarding orphan works. The paper analyses in what way collective management organizations can be useful to solve the problem of so-called orphan works. The issue of orphan works (works whose authors or other rightholders are not known or cannot be located or contacted to obtain copyright permissions) is today one of the most important elements of the debate on the future of copyright law. As the number of orphan works keeps growing it becomes a serious problem which requires to be resolved by creating an appropriate legal framework. It seems that the best way of addressing the problem would be to entrust the management of orphan works with specialized entities i. e. copyright or related rights collecting societies. Namely it is worth to consider the extended collective licensing system that proved to be effective in the Nordic countries. However, the Directive 2012/28/EU on certain permitted uses of orphan works which sets out common rules on the use of orphan works is not based of that system. The absence of mutual recognition implies that an extended collective license is valid only in the national territory in which the statutory presumption applies. It would seem that at least diligent search should be entrusted to copyright or related rights collecting societies. They have access to databases on the works, objects of related rights and rightholders and they interact with similar organizations in other Member States. In the Polish copyright law provisions referring to the collective management of copyright do not fulfill its function. Professional, strong, effective and representative copyright collecting societies with well-defined area of activity are needed to solve the problem of orphan works. This requires amendment to the Copyright Law.

Fair use allows to certain limited uses of copyrighted work without permission from the author or right holder. As a limitation and exception to the exclusive right of the author of a creative work fair use is permitted for educational purposes in the Polish law and is covered by the Polish copyright law articles. In view of high importance of education fair use for educational purposes seems to be wholly justified. The paper presents the issue of possible use of copyrighted works in teaching process which comes from the Polish Act on Copyright and Related Rights. It analyses whether the provisions are adequate in the face of the development of digital and web-based information technology. Some amendments to the Polish copyright law are proposed. Another issue discussed in the paper is whether and to what extend so-called Open Educational Resources (OER – freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning etc.) can present a real alternative to fair use.