Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 11:16:24PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> * Some countries, particularly some in Europe, have a concept of "moral
> rights" that attach to creative works. I admit I am not too familiar
> with these, but they are not the same thing as copyright and have
> little in common with copyright. Moreover, moral rights are seldom
> asserted in anything the Debian Project seeks to distribute. So, let
> us not confuse moral rights with copyrights and thus lazily introduce
> the language of the former when speaking of the latter.
Here in Canada, we too have moral rights on our work. From
http://www.trytel.com/~pbkerr/copyright.html
"Moral rights include the author's right to be associated with the work
by name, or pseudonym and the right to remain anonymous, and include the
author's right to the integrity of the work (that is, the author's right
to stop the work from being distorted, mutilated or modified, to the
prejudice of the author's honour or reputation, or from being used in
association with a product, service, cause or institution)."
So moral rights can be very well asserted aside from licensing.
For instance, if I allow modification and redistribution of a technical
document that I have written, that is a relaxation of copyright
restrictions. However, if I understand Canadian law correctly; this
does not relax my moral rights. If you edit my technical document such
that it uses language that is offensive (replacing the word "woman"
with a derogatory equivalent,) then you have violated my moral right to
the integrity of the work.
As well, my moral rights allow me to pursue legal action if
another institution adopts it as some form of symbol, and I do not wish
it to be associated as such.
Simon
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