To set the record straight, moral rights were supposed to have been
introduced into the US subsequent to its accession to the Berne Convention,
but this has not been implemented in the DMCA or elsewhere. The argument is
that "sufficient protections already exist under case law" to protect
authors from infringements of their rights of paternity, integrity and
misrepresentation.
In the UK the situation is different. Although moral rights were introduced
in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, they are waivable, and they
require a formal declaration that the "author claims al rights" or similar
phrasing. The waivability is considered almost automatic in some areas
(script writing, for example), while a list of excluded categories is
considerable, including all writing for hire (journalism, "director's script
writer", etc.) and "publication in .. a newspaper, magazine or similar
periodical." However, this has never been applied to journal literature, and
so Iain is wrong when he says "Alas, moral rights in Britain under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act do not extend to individual articles" -
they do..
Chris
Chris Zielinski
STP AHPSR/EIP
World Health Organization
Avenue Appia, CH1211 Geneva
Switzerland
Tel: 004122-7914435 or mobile 0044797-1045354
-----Original Message-----
> Christopher D. Green wrote:
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>
> Fytton Rowland wrote:
>
> > Copyright is, I believe, significantly different in the UK and the USA. In
> > the UK, as Iain says, copyright exists as soon as a text is written by its
> > author, whether it is published or not. In the USA, copyright has to be
> > registered.
>
> This has not been true for many years now. See p.3 col. 2 of
> http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf
>
> > In Europe there are moral rights (such as the right to be
> > identified as the author of your work) which remain with the author
> > even if the copyright is transferred to another.
>
> And a very sensible system this is, which the US should adopt. Giving up
> ownership need not entail giving up authorship.
Received on Mon Jan 19 2004 - 14:54:38 GMT