[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"

[Reinier Bakels]

> I'm sorry, I just don't think that artistic integrity is something  that 
> should be protected in law as such. Instead I think it would be  more 
> productive to simply talk about commercial exploitation of you  work. If I 
> publish a bad translation of your work without your  consent, that is a 
> commercial exploitation.
Two comments.
First, moral rights - by definition and by law - can not be transferred or 
waived. E.g. an author who is forced to agree to a contract with a publisher 
under unfavourable terms (I noted before that this is pretty common for 
authors at the beginning of their career), still retain the moral rights. So 
they serve a separate purpose.
Second, even as regards commercial exploitation, the present collective 
management schemes assume that the author always wants to publish, or to 
allow derivative works, if only he is financially compensated. It ignores 
the alternative that the author may want not to allow derivative 
publications at all, for whatever sum of money. Eventually I believe that 
the fundamental right of the (real) author to dispose of his work deserves 
PP support, if only because collective rights organisations do NOT deserve 
support.
>
> Or would you prohibit somebody making a bad translation of your work  and 
> distributing it noncommercially?
>
Yes, of course. Typically a translation is published under the name of the 
original author, and the translator is only mentioned in small print an/or 
at the bottom. Which is nice and modest, but likely to give the impression 
that the original author is reponsible for the wordings - and for a 
potentially bad translation. He is hurt then in his *moral* interests.

PP imho should seriously question all modes of *commercial* exploitation of 
works. They are obviously most likely to be abused, by nasty people with 
dollar signs in their eyes. But the personality (=moral) rights of the 
(real) author imho deserve full support. To give another example: you don't 
want the work of art you made available for free to be used in a commercial 
campaign by Benneton without your consent, would you? OK, assume you don't 
intend *any* commercial exploitation by yourself - but then (perhaps even 
more) you may want to prohibit commercial exploitation by others - and the 
example shows that this is possible without affecting the actual copyright, 
in an advertrising campaign.

reinier

reinier