DU Attorneys: What can you tell me about moral rights?

[Bertha Venation]

I tried to learn from this site http://www.outsourcing-law.com/moral_rights.htm but I'm only confused.

The issue: I might upload some of my photos to a site that'll create photo calendars for me. Among their conditions is this phrase:

". . . . (Y)ou warrant that all moral rights in any uploaded materials have been waived."

I don't even understand the difference between copyright and moral rights.

All I need to know is: do I forfeit rights to my own photographs if I upload them to this vendor? IOW, can they legally profit if they decide, somewhere along the way, that my pics are good enough for them to make money?

Thanks.

[Sanity Claws]

1. No idea

I'm an attorney and haven't a clue.
I often tell clients that there is a difference between the law and morality. What they may be claiming could be morally right but not protected by law.

[Cuban_Liberal]

2. 1st-year law student, and I have no idea.

:shrug:

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Attorney checking in. As my experience goes, I am unaware of what the

definition is for moral rights or what they represent. However, the term does sound like it originates from a legal system outside the U.S., like Europe. From your link, it appears to have something to do with intellectual property. Try a google search with European Union.

Good luck.

[dpbrown]

4. A right including making decisions about their further use of the photos

Depending on the jurisdiction (as your website mentioned, this isn't generally a U.S. right), moral rights cannot be waived.

I found this entry on another website:
http://www.advokatska-komora.co.yu/arhiva/Copyright_e.htm

Authors’ Moral Rights

According to the new Act, authors’ moral rights are as follows:

I. Right of recognition of authorship

II. Right to be named

III. Right of publication

IV. Right to the protection of integrity of the work

V. Right of objection to improper exploitation of the work

The Right of recognition of authorship is regulated, as one of the minimal convention rights, by Article 14. of the Act.

The Right to be named practically derives from the Right of recognition of authorship.

Although by definition and in essence, the right of publication` is a moral authors’ right, it is certainly also of a proprietary nature for the author. If a work remains unpublished by the will of its author, there will, of course be proprietary components of this right. It can be concluded from the wording of Article 16 of the new Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act that the legislators opted for the broader notion of publication, since they allowed the author not only to decide whether to publish his work or not, but also to determine the manner in which his work is to be made accessible to the public. Of course, this has to do with the first publication of a work of authorship, which is one of the authors’ exclusive rights. In contrast to the way in which this authors’ right was regulated by the 1978 Copyright Act, the new Act provides that in addition to the right to publish a work as one of the authors’ exclusive rights, until the moment of its first publication, only the author may release any information about his work or describe it.

Incidentally, the superseded Copyright Act accorded an exclusively proprietary character to the right of publication. Not only was this right not covered by Article 28 in which the authors’ moral rights were listed, but it was regulated by Article 31, which was governing the exploitation of a work of authorship.

The right to the protection of integrity of the work includes the right of the author to oppose the making of changes to his work by any other person, as well as the authority to make changes himself or authorise the making of changes to it by other persons. By giving the author the exclusive right to protect the integrity of his work and stating only a few of the possible ways of violating the integrity of a work, the legislators have regulated this very important authors’ right in an extensive way, by allowing courts on the basis of this Act to determine other possible forms of violation of integrity.

The right to oppose improper exploitation of the work - whereas the copyright laws of some other countries, as well as the earlier Yugoslav Copyright Act of 1978 and some law theorists, regarded an author’s right to honour and reputation as a single right to respect for the integrity of the work and person of the author, Article 18 of the new Act defines respect for the person and the right to oppose as a separate moral right of the author.

Assignment of Authors’ Moral Rights

Assignment by inheritance. The assignment of copyrights is governed by special regulations relating to the law of inheritance. The Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act regulates the range of assignment of authors’ moral rights. Article 52 of that Act provides that heirs to exercise all rights other than those which would be a positive prerogative of authors’ moral rights or the publication of an unpublished work if its author had forbidden its publication and changes to the work of authorship itself. Such a solution includes the duty of the heir to prove in the event of a dispute, that the author/testator had actually forbidden the publication of his unpublished work.

Following the death of an author, some rights relating to moral rights may be exercised, also by associations of authors, and some other institutions. In Article 100 of the Act, the legislators have extended the number of persons who may protect this moral right of an author, by establishing that besides the above mentioned persons, anyone has the right to protect the authorship and integrity of a work.

Assignment by contract is not permissible in view of the fact that the disposal of these rights is precluded inter vivos by Article 54 of the Act.

Period of validity of an author’s moral rights. The new Yugoslav Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act has set the period of validity of an author’s proprietary rights at 50 years, which is different from the time-limit set in one of the EC directives. The reasons for this departure are of an economic nature.

As for the period of validity of an author’s moral rights, of the three possible solutions, i.e., for the duration of the author’s life (e.g., in Austria), for the duration of validity of the proprietary rights (e.g., in Germany, Great Britain, etc.) or unlimited duration (e.g., the Czech Republic, France, Italy, etc.), the Yugoslav legislators accepted this last solution, so that Article 96 of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act states that the author’s moral rights shall run even after the expiration of the proprietary ones.

Judicial protection of an author’s moral rights. This is regulated by Article 172 of the new Act, which deals with the protection of authors’ proprietary and moral rights under civil law. In case of authors’ moral rights, the Act affords to the author or performer the right to file a claim for damages for consequential loss resulting from a violation of his moral rights. In view of the wording of Article 172 (2), the right to judicial protection is afforded only to the author or performer. As for the right of heirs to damages for any consequential loss, the general provisions on damages of the Law of Contract and Torts are applicable. Incidentally, a consequential loss resulting from violation of an author’s moral rights may arise from violation of any of the rights referred in Articles 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the Act.

Protection under criminal law. Violations of the moral rights of authors and performers, which constitute a criminal act and the sanctions, to which their perpetrators are liable are listed in Article 182 of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act.

[Bertha Venation]

5. Thanks to you all

I appreciate everyone's responses.