I am not sure that you really want to get into this terrain but.... " Moral rights" essentially do not exist in US copyright law ( except for visual artists and in certain cirsumstances where they are not called moral rights.); indeed, US law is essentially hostile to moral rights and was able to force though a section of the TRIPS agreement exempting moral rights as a requirement for national statutory protection. Moral rights are derived from author's rights systems in Contintental Europe. They do exist in the UK by statute.
" Moral rights" should NOT be conflated with intellectual property...and it is no more of a transparent term. Indeed " moral rights" is a bad translation of the French word " droits moraux", roughly personal rights. Alan Story Kent Law School Canterbury UK -----Original Message----- From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org]On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Monday 22 July 2002 15:07 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote: > whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still > retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be > changed, etc. Yes, that's my understanding too. Perhaps "moral right" is a more transparent term than "intellectual property." I think we need to hear from Charles Oppenheim on this... (Also, what becomes of the moral right if a text is put in the public domain?) Stevan