Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:56 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474)
Parent article: The unending story of cdrtools

He's unforunately right about "violations of German copyright law (which, it seems, forbids any change which Jörg disapproves of)".

This is because many European countries provide what are known as "Moral rights". You can read that Wikipedia page for all the details, but I know it's a particular problem for free software in France (if you distribute it there and any of the authors come from France).

Moral rights include the right of the author to control the "integrity of the work". They are also not transferable. The author continues to control the moral rights even if they were done as work-for-hire or the copyright was transferred/sold to another party.

Yet another sillyness about copyright law ...

Rich.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:03 UTC (Thu) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link] (10 responses)

While moral rights do exist in European copyright law (and that is good), if an author releases the work under the GPL, they explicitly give permission to do almost any kind of change to the work, including changes the original author disapproves of.

So I don't buy that argument.

I admit I haven't studied German law. If that really supports the claim, then the GPL is effectively dead in Germany.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:24 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (6 responses)

if an author releases the work under the GPL, they explicitly give permission to do almost any kind of change to the work, including changes the original author disapproves of.

As far as I know, under Hungarian law the author is actually not allowed to give up/sell/transfer/etc. his moral rights. I guess its similar in German law. I don't know how this relates to the GPL, though.

Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT

Posted Aug 13, 2009 10:06 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

My understanding of moral rights is also that you can't give them up. That's their point. It's to put limits on how much a powerful publishing house can bully an individual author.

But, that doesn't mean that Jorg is right or that moral rights are a problem for free software. Moral rights are interpreted by a judge, and no judge has yet ruled that a software developer has moral rights about the technical direction of a project.

Further, if moral rights are a problem for free software, they they're also just as much a problem for proprietary software. Example: I work for CompanyX, I write some software, I leave, the subsequent maintainer makes changes, I wail about my masterpiece having been ruined and I take CompanyX to court over violation of my moral rights. That's never happened, so there's nothing to substantiate worries about moral rights in software.

Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT

Posted Aug 13, 2009 13:57 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (2 responses)

I seem to recall (although I don't have the details) that there was a court decision in Germany which clarified the situation with moral rights and free software, basically stating that releasing your code under a free software licence was already a clear statement of how you wished your work to be used.

Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT

Posted Aug 13, 2009 18:57 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

If anyone has a link, that would be very interesting.

Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT

Posted Aug 13, 2009 21:59 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I vaguely recall seeing the argument made that the (sometimes ignored) GPL requirement

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

is intended in part to address the moral rights issue: if my changes to your program break it, it should be made clear that you are not to blame.

I think that this was in some interminable debian-legal discussion where someone claimed that the above requirement curtails freedom somehow.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 14, 2009 16:47 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

My understanding of moral rights is also that you can't give them up. That's their point. It's to put limits on how much a powerful publishing house can bully an individual author.

What kind of bullying do you think the law contemplates? Kidnapping the author's child? Offering the author so much money he can't refuse? Blacklisting the author with other publishers so he can't work?

Or maybe the point is just to protect an author from his own ignorance or foolishness.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 10:19 UTC (Thu) by mp (subscriber, #5615) [Link]

Checking the Polish copyright law: computer programs have some specific rules applied to them. This includes limiting the applicable moral rights to only being considered the author of a work and being able to publish it under your name, pseudonymously or anonymously. Control over integrity and uses of the work is specifically excluded for computer programs here.

No idea if such limitations are present in the law of other countries, but I would think this cannot be only a local idea.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:59 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] (2 responses)

I know for a fact you can't transfer or give up moral rights in France. One project I'm involved with (based in France) took legal advice about this issue, and it means the project can only take very minor patches from outside contributors into the base package. The reason is that some outside contributor could later claim their moral rights over parts of the project, if, for example, we pissed them off or had to substantially change their contribution later. There is no disclaimer or FSF-style assignment we could do that would change this situation.

[However note IANAL, and IANA European (C) Lawyer either]

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 19:37 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]

However, on the issue of moral rights, I don't quite buy this argument since the moral rights are intangible in every sense but being mentioned as the/an author -- the important rights are the right to use, distribute, copy, etc. ("Verwertungsrechte" in German), and those are easily transferable, transfered, etc. I suppose that's what the other comment about licensing under GPL alluded to.

Moral rights

Posted Aug 13, 2009 21:17 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

So, er, how do you become a non-outside contributor? Join the right INRIA
research group? It seems to me that unless there's a way to become 'not
outside', they've eliminated any possibility of getting new development
blood into the project, which cannot be good :/

(yes, this is a guess as to which project you're talking about, but I bet
I'm right ;) )