Copyright Center

Ambiguity and Change in Copyright:

Moral Rights, Attribution, and Integrity

During this year’s Copyright Center feature articles, we’ve covered a variety of topics, from the basics to more complex audiovisual and computer component works:

• Copyright Basics
• Copyright and Travelogues
• Copyright Drama!
• Games, Copyright, and International Treaties
• Copyright and Access for the Visually Impaired
• Copyright for Computers, Components, and Programs

All of these informative feature articles, while offering up details about copyright in specific types of works, take for granted the concepts of author and creative work. (In this article we will refer to author/creator and work/creation interchangeably.) We already understand what an author is—or do we? Most of us spend time on a work and feel that what we’ve generated is our personal property—our intellectual property (bolded words can be found defined in the Copyright Center Glossary). After all, once we’ve “fixed it in a tangible medium,” it is already protected by U.S. copyright law (USCO, n.d., §101). But what is property, precisely? Is it material and economic only, or is there something more? To consider this, we must also think about the relationship an author has with their creation. In legal terms, this is moral rights.

According to etymonline, the oldest Latin base of author is auctor which connoted a master, leader, or author. As the Latin word was subjected to change and moved through Latin, French, and English uses, additional meanings would include invention, advice, opinion, command, influence. Since the 14th century, use of this word would connote power, even implying trust. We recognize this in words today with the same root: authority, authoritarian, authentic.

So we can apply this understanding of author in the realm of moral rights. CopyrightLaws.com defines moral rights thusly: “the rights of authorship, the claims an author can make on their work, and their right not to be misrepresented. Moral rights take for granted that there is a personal, intrinsic right of connection and domain between and author (creator) and their work” (Copyrightlaws.com, 2023, emphasis added). Additional concepts that are included in the umbrella of moral rights are as follows:

• Attribution: the right to claim authorship, use a pseudonym, or be anonymous
• Integrity: the right to prevent unauthorized changes
• Disclosure: the right to determine how works will be introduces/published
• Withdrawal: the to remove works from publication (LOC, 2016)

Despite our awareness of these terms, U.S. copyright law is rather lacking in its applicability to moral rights: “While U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 lays out the code for economic rights and explains the author’s limited monopoly on the ability to copy, distribute, display, and perform their work, it is murky on moral rights, which ‘attribute the author of a work and protect their reputation’” (Copyrightlaws.com, 2023).

Attribution… We’ve heard that term used before, like when we’re required to attribute our use of another person’s work and we cite it. Citations, that’s required, right? To avoid plagiarism? Because plagiarism is illegal? The answer though is still murky: yes AND no:

Copyright vs. Plagiarism – What’s the difference?