Re: to the point/Latin mutteri

Vance Koven writes:
>why should moral rights be incorporated in a copyright
>law at all? They have precious little to do with the subject matter of
>copyright.

That depends, of course, on how you define the subject matter of copyright. If the purpose of copyright is only to protect a freely marketable commodity, then moral rights and copyright would be incompatible. But if copyright serves also to promote the importance of authorship, then the protection of authors against misattribution and the distortion of their work at the hands of their publishers and others has very much to do with copyright. The same is true to the extent that copyright serves to promote a diversity of expression since publishers have every economic incentive to water down controversial expression in order to sell to the lowest common denominator.

Neil Netanel
Assistant Professor
University of Texas School of Law
<nnetanel[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu> Received on Mon Dec 05 1994 - 19:13:01 GMT