"What means moral?" sounds like something Yoda might say, doesn't it? Which is not inappropriate for an alien romances blog.
Indians, Australians, and Europeans may have a better moral compass when it comes to the moral rights of authors, artists, creators than Americans.
That might be a provocative statement, but legal bloggers Andrew J. Thomas, Jacob L. Tracer, Lauren M. Greene and Steven R. Englund representing the mostly American law firm Jenner & Block LLP --which I cited last week-- wrote something kinder and gentler, but similar.
"Moral rights are protected to some extent, but they are more narrowly defined and of less practical effect in the US than in many other jurisdictions."
"The Copyright Act also prohibits providing false copyright management information (CMI), including the name and identifying information of the author, and removing or altering CMI in certain circumstances.State laws relating to privacy, publicity, contracts, fraud, misrepresentation, unfair competition and defamation, and the federal Lanham Act also provide certain protections consistent with the concept of ‘moral rights’."
Perhaps it is something to do with the zeitgeist (a German word that translates as time/spirit.) The "zeitgeist" text link to an India Today article illustrates the point well... so well, that I upped it twice.
Whether or not Andy Warhol appropriated someone else's words without attribution, the saying, “Art is
anything you can get away with," reflects a morality --or lack thereof-- that is quite pervasive since Y2K. The same applies to "innovation" and "business".
As Jana S. Farmer for Wilson Elser writes:
"The decision will, of course, have far-reaching consequences on artists, photographers and those who incorporate the works other others into the content they create."
Turning to Australia, legal blogger Stephanie Shahine for the Australian law firm Rigby Cooke shares a very short and interesting Australian perspective on the meaning of "moral rights". Among several revelations about Australia is:
"...employment law and intellectual property can intermingle and that, even though copyright in works created by an employee in pursuance of their employment vest in the employer, moral rights cannot be ‘assigned’ to an employer..."
Finally, and perhaps long overdue, in 2019, the Copyright Office put out a Policy Report titled, “Authors, Attribution, and Integrity: Examining Moral
Rights in the United States.” One of the Copyright Office's concerns was, and may still be, that moral rights are protected differently under different States' laws, and there may be a need to bring the diffferent laws into harmony by means of a clarifying federal law.
Law bloggers Anthony Lupo and Eva Pulliam for the law firm Arent Fox Schiff discussed the then-news, and their analysis of moral rights and rights of publicity is still worth reading.
"Moral rights are the rights of a creator of copyright protected work to receive credit for such work and, in some instances, to protect the integrity of the work to ensure that it properly represents the artist."
They also explain what publicity rights are, and how moral rights and publicity rights are often entwined, but protections also vary from State to State.
"Publicity rights are an individual’s right to control the commercial use of his or her name, likeness, voice or other indicia of identity"
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