On 4/21/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Is that so? Do moral rights not expire together with the copyright to the work?
Moral rights are a completely separate bundle of rights to the economic rights under copyright. So I can grant a licence relating to my economic rights under copyright, or even waive those rights completely, and still hold the moral rights.
Sometimes the moral rights will expire with the copyright, but sometimes they will expire with the death of the author, depending on the law of the jurisdiction. Sometimes the rights will persist as part of the author's estate and can be exercised by the estate. [1]
The one that comes into play here is the right of integrity. Whether that right has been infringed is dependent on the facts of the case - there are no hard and fast rules about when infringement occurs. But generally, some factors that come into play include: * the nature of the work, * the purpose, manner and context in which the work is used.
This may affect different WMF projects differently. But mainly this would be an issue for reusers, and not for us.
One point to remember is that moral rights don't affect the ability of someone to deal with their economic rights under copyright by licencing the work, even though the moral rights still may affect someone using the work under the licence.
-- [1] The French law seems to suggest that the moral rights can actually be devised, rather than merely subsisting in the estate, but that goes at odds with the idea that they're inalienable.