Creative commons: America's moral rights?

Sundara Rajan, M. (2011) Creative commons: America's moral rights? Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal, 21, pp. 905-969.

Abstract

This paper examines the status of authors' moral rights in a post-Dastar world. It argues that, apart from the minimal recognition of moral rights for visual artists in the Visual Artists Rights Act (1990) and a handful of state laws, Creative Commons and other open access movements currently represent the only effective recognition of moral rights in the United States. This paper examines approaches to moral rights in a variety of open-access scenarios, including Creative Commons, free software, Wikipedia, and Google Books, and it attempts to assess the advantages and dangers of offering moral rights as an alternative to regular copyright protection. The paper argues that open access models do not provide sufficient protection for moral rights in the United States. Rather, the approach to moral rights in open access movements should be used as a starting-point for the broader recognition of moral rights under U.S. law. In particular, moral rights as understood by the open access community can help to achieve a better balance between corporate interests and the public interest under U.S. copyright law – an opportunity that should not be missed.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sundara Rajan, Professor Mira
• Authors: Sundara Rajan, M.
• Subjects: K Law > K Law (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Law
• Journal Name: Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal
• Journal Abbr.: IPLJ
• Publisher: Fordham University
• ISSN: 1079-9699