Re: Moral rights (Was: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity)

Moritz Roettinger <moritz.roettinger[_at_]dg23.cec.be> wrote on the topic of moral rights and, having discussed differences between the laws of various jurisdictions, went on to write, amongst, other things, the following:
>
> 2. Instead of arguing the differencies between the copyright and the
> author's rights concepts, shouldn't we rather try to find ways to come
> to a compromise, in particular bearing in mind that copyright has become
> a global issue?

This is something that has occurred to me also but there are a number of practical problems.

First of all, each of the players are convinced that *they* are right - many US commentators talk about the effect of digitisation, the Internet, increased collective production of works, new types of works, etc. as rendering the idea of a single authorial genius redundant (hence, moral rights, in their view, should and will wither) whereas, with the possible exception of the Marseille-based "copyright in the French style" thinkers, most French commentators think that new media, new uses, etc. should bend/be tempered by moral rights thinking (cf. the Sirinelli Report for the Ministry of Culture in the early 90s).

Second, there is no clear divide between common law and civil law jurisdictions. Instead, we now see a spectrum of protection and protection systems wherein the UK and New Zealand's system is not very far from that of the Netherlands (cf. the allowances for consents and waivers). Although, one might think that the multiplicity of schemes would make it easier to compromise, if anything it has made it harder since the protagonists at the extreme ends of the spectrum cannot find a single compromise to negotiate around.

Finally, despite appearances to the contrary, the civil law countries are fundamentally split amongst themselves: the idea that the French would willingly give up perpetual moral rights protection in favour of the German approach of limiting protection to the same duration as the term of economic rights is, at best, optimistic.

I have made brief suggestions for a compromise system in a forthcoming essay in "Perspectives in Intellectual Property" but I hesitate to post them here simply because I do not think there will be any online support - the compromise involves the sacrifice of too may "sacred cows".

Gary Lea
<g.r.lea[_at_]btinternet.com> Received on Mon Sep 07 1998 - 11:11:10 GMT