[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"
Reinier Bakels
r.bakels at planet.nl
Wed Jan 7 10:07:16 CET 2009
> 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
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