To set the record straight, moral rights were supposed to have been introduced into the US subsequent to its accession to the Berne Convention, but this has not been implemented in the DMCA or elsewhere. The argument is that "sufficient protections already exist under case law" to protect authors from infringements of their rights of paternity, integrity and misrepresentation.
In the UK the situation is different. Although moral rights were introduced in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, they are waivable, and they require a formal declaration that the "author claims al rights" or similar phrasing. The waivability is considered almost automatic in some areas (script writing, for example), while a list of excluded categories is considerable, including all writing for hire (journalism, "director's script writer", etc.) and "publication in .. a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical." However, this has never been applied to journal literature, and so Iain is wrong when he says "Alas, moral rights in Britain under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act do not extend to individual articles" - they do.. Chris Chris Zielinski STP AHPSR/EIP World Health Organization Avenue Appia, CH1211 Geneva Switzerland Tel: 004122-7914435 or mobile 0044797-1045354 -----Original Message----- > Christopher D. Green wrote: > To: [email protected] > > Fytton Rowland wrote: > > > Copyright is, I believe, significantly different in the UK and the USA. In > > the UK, as Iain says, copyright exists as soon as a text is written by its > > author, whether it is published or not. In the USA, copyright has to be > > registered. > > This has not been true for many years now. See p.3 col. 2 of > http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf > > > In Europe there are moral rights (such as the right to be > > identified as the author of your work) which remain with the author > > even if the copyright is transferred to another. > > And a very sensible system this is, which the US should adopt. Giving up > ownership need not entail giving up authorship.
