Re: Copyright of laws

Note that the U.S. does have some moral rights in its federal copyright act, but really only with respect to fine artists. Otherwise the gov't claims that other areas of the law, i.e. outside the copyright act, provide adequate moralr ights protection as is required by the Berne Convention minima.

Lesley Harris, ae345[_at_]freenet.carleton.ca (author of "Canadian Copyright Law" published by McGraw-Hill in 1992.)

On Wed, 23 Nov 1994, Sean Kyle-Price wrote:
>
> Charles Keller writes:
> > For example:
> > `_Rumpole a la Carte_ by John Mortimer
> > (C) Avanpress Ltd. 1990
> > The moral right of the author has been asserted'
> >
> > Perhaps someone would enlighten us as to what this legal "right"
> > is, how it might be violated, and its intended purpose. I assume
> > this is not a form of intellectual property created by Jerry Falwell
> > et. al. since it appears to be UK law. ;-)
>
>
> The concept of "moral rights" originated, I believe, in France.
> The theory is that, besides having an economic right in his works
> (copyright) an author has a personal relationship with his works
> based on the creative endeavours put into producing those works.
>
> This personal relationship gives rise to certain rights in respect
> of those works which only the author or the author's heirs may
> exercise. These rights stay with the author even if the copyright
> in his work has been assigned elsewhere.
>
> As I understand it, the French have five rights:
>
> 1. The paternity right - The right of an author to be
> identified as such
>
> 2. The integrity right - The right of an author to prevent
> derogatory treatment of his works
>
> 3. The disclosure right - The right of an author to withhold
> his work from publication
>
> 4. The non-attribution right - The right not to have a work
> falsely attributed to an author
>
> 5. The "droit de suite" - The right of an author who has
> sold a painting, sculpture or other object to receive a
> proportion of the proceeds of any subsequent re-sale
>
> In the UK we have adopted the paternity, integrity and
> non-attribution rights for certain types of works in certain
> circumstances, but not the disclosure right nor the droit de suite.
>
> The Berne convention provides for the incorporation into national
> law of the integrity and paternity rights.
>
> One possible way that the integrity right may be used is to prevent
> parodies of works. For example, it is generally accepted that if
> someone attempted to release that parody of the Michael Jackson
> song (I forget who did it but it was called "Eat It") under current
> UK legislation, the composer of the original song would have been
> able to prevent its release because it was a derogotary treatment
> even if his publisher had granted a licence.
>
> > Any thoughts as to why the US objects to "moral rights" might be
> > interesting as well.
>
> I suspect (although I don't know) that the American objection is
> that these "moral" rights tend to impinge upon the economic rights
> in the works. I guess that Americans have different priorities to
> the French.
>
> sean
>
> Sean Kyle-Price 10 Myddleton Road
> Solicitor London N22 4NS
> sean[_at_]southern.com Tel: 081 365 7890
Received on Wed Nov 23 1994 - 19:18:48 GMT