If you're like me, ever since the Flickr-virgin case and the release of the 3.0 CC licenses, you've been curious about the relationship between free culture and "moral rights". After reading this post [<a href="http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2007/11/07/cc-oa-moral-rights/">
http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2007/11/07/cc-oa-moral-rights/</a>], today, I learned something I didn't know before: Canada, apparently, may be a unique jurisdiction in that it allows content creators to waive moral rights.
<br><br>I'm not sure if there has ever been an official Wikimedia (or broader free culture) opinion on moral rights, but they seem antithetical to the cause - it allows the original creator to dictate conditions on reusers. Creative Commons seems to have washed their hands of this, but when it's possible, I don't think we should. At some point, I think we will also have to deal with the question of whether retaining moral rights (when not legally forced to) can be considered creating non-free content.
<br><br>Although this does seem to be a complex, unanswered, issue, I think we should encourage Commons users creating Canadian works to waive these rights. I've created a draft template at [[User:Padraic/Moralrights]], please take a look. Ideally, this kind of waiver could be included in the Canadian CC license templates as well.
<br><br>There is also the international legal question, although I have a legal newbie, it seems to me if moral rights are waived by the creator in the country of a work's creation, then other countries would have no obligation to continue to protect them.
<br><br>Thoughts?<br>Padraic<br>