Re: Copyright of laws

With respect to moral rights, the query was raised why US law does not protect moral rights to the same extent that France and other countries do, to which it was offered that the US does protect moral rights in fine art but that Congress and the weight of informed opinion here considers that other provisions adequately protect moral rights, or their equivalent, in other types of copyrighted material.

I agree with this analysis and point out that the chief argument in favor of including moral rights for fine art in the Copyright Act, as well as in the dozen or so state laws enacted before the 1990 Copyright Act revision, is that integrity rights (the principal ones explicitly protected) are significant to fine art inasmuch it is the original and not the copy that is important in this area.

So far as writing is concerned, it is only by making copies that the ideas of the author are conveyed. It's customary, in other words, for the author to come to the audience rather than vice versa. This still leaves open the problem of parody as violating integrity rights. However, even the French have not been dogmatic about enforcing moral rights when other significant values are at stake. In the US I'd say that the First Amendment, which is implicated in parody, would trump moral rights (even though as part now of the Copyright Act you could say moral rights have independent Constitutional support).  

• Vance R. Koven * phone: 617-482-3852 *
• attorney at law * fax: 617-482-4972 *
• 20 Park Plaza Ste. 520 * net: koven[_at_]umbsky.cc.umb.edu *
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