In most jurisdictions they boil down to a right for the creator of the work to receive or deny attribution (the latter if the integrity of the work has been compromised; e.g. consider if I wrote a political manifesto and somebody decided to republish it under my name but insert statements endorsing fascism on every page with the intend of discrediting me).
This does not prevent your ability to exercise speech - it places some small limitations on how you can attribute the work, that are far less restrictive than estate rights.
Some jurisdictions extend moral right somewhat farther, but compared to estate rights the restrictions are tiny and they all apply to your ability to duplicate other peoples creative works, not your ability to exercise your own speech.
I am very curious to see why you believe moral rights impact free speech in any significant way.
I don't think your scenario is a good example of the advantage of moral rights because I couldn't carry it out under copyright either. In the US, UK, and France, copyright is life + 70 years. Republishing your work, even with inserted statements on fascism, is a violation of copyright laws, so not permitted. Note that in the UK, moral rights only extend to the length of copyright law; in France it's forever.
Don't you think that 70 years is enough time for your original views to have gotten out? I mean, I could also take the works of Darwin and insert references to young earth creationism on every page, but I don't think it would change many people's minds about Darwin's works.
I suppose I could take an obscure biography written 100 years old and change it to discredit the original author. But what impact would it have? I could as easily write a completely fake story and attribute it to the original person, and get the same effect. Do you wish to also ban historical novels?
In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp, the Supreme Court decision (8-0, btw) said:
> Reading "origin" in §43(a) to require attribution of uncopyrighted materials would pose serious practical problems. Without a copyrighted work as the basepoint, the word "origin" has no discernable limits. A video of the MGM film Carmen Jones, after its copyright has expired, would presumably require attribution not just to MGM, but to Oscar Hammerstein II (who wrote the musical on which the film was based), to Georges Bizet (who wrote the opera on which the musical was based), and to Prosper Mérimée (who wrote the novel on which the opera was based). In many cases, figuring out who is in the line of "origin" would be no simple task.
It seems the same problems of attribution, and of defining the source of the material, would apply to any moral right which extends "forever."
Thus why I don't think your example helps clarify the reason for the particular moral right you mentioned.
Thanks! I read about that when it happened, which influenced my decision to use Origin of Species here. However, as it was a rebuttal attached, and not attributed to Darwin, and didn't distort or mutilate Darwin's own work, it didn't seem to fit the scenario.
In most jurisdictions they boil down to a right for the creator of the work to receive or deny attribution (the latter if the integrity of the work has been compromised; e.g. consider if I wrote a political manifesto and somebody decided to republish it under my name but insert statements endorsing fascism on every page with the intend of discrediting me).
This does not prevent your ability to exercise speech - it places some small limitations on how you can attribute the work, that are far less restrictive than estate rights.
Some jurisdictions extend moral right somewhat farther, but compared to estate rights the restrictions are tiny and they all apply to your ability to duplicate other peoples creative works, not your ability to exercise your own speech.
I am very curious to see why you believe moral rights impact free speech in any significant way.