Dilemma And Adjustment Of The Moral Rights System

As a means of an author for controlling his/her works, moral rights are aiming at maintaining the personal or spiritual relationship between the author and the works. For a long time, the field of scientific principal and law has been arguing about the status of moral rights. The evolution history of moral rights indicates that romantic authorship view is playing a role of justifying personal possession and controlling over works. The over-emphasis on the notion of "works reflect personalities of authors", however, is not good for replying to the complicated and changeable world. Moreover, technological advancement, along with the economic and social development, have resulted in many challenges and doubts against the theories and practices of moral rights. Nevertheless, the moral rights system is playing an irreplaceable role in guaranteeing personal benefits of authors and cultural development benefits. Since the existence of moral rights is indispensable, it is necessary to try best to lower its negative effects on works or cultural circulation. In modern infonnation society that is controlled by digital technology and internet, it is an inevitable choice to appropriately weaken the absoluteness of moral rights.Besides the introduction and conclusion parts, this paper is containing the following four parts:In the first part, the historical evolution course of the right of personality of copyright from notions to rights was studied. Under the influence of romanticism and philosophy of the subject, along with the driving by French precedents and the deepening of Germany theories, moral rights have developed from a series of disconnected statutes, contractual provisions and judicial decisions into one unified form.In the second part, the real dilemma of moral rights system was stated. From the perspective of concept change, structuralism authorship view has threatened the ruling status of the author in works through overturning the traditional author-centered aesthetic interpretation method and denying the personality of the author in works. When comparing the two major law systems, we found that the version system has continued the idea of "utilitarianism" which has to a great extent restricted and reconstructed the applicability of moral rights and resulted in the loss of some basic features of the traditional moral rights. In the copyright market, the conflict between moral rights and property rights has influenced the effective commercial utilization of works and weakened the controlling of the author over works. Furthermore, the appearance of commissioned works and works of legal entity has put moral rights in the contradiction of "subject-right"’separation. Under the network environment, the digital technology has made it easier and more undetectable to invade moral rights; meanwhile, the collaborative creation mode has resulted in weaker relationship between the author and works. As a result, the rationality of moral rights has been threatened.In the third part, the value structure of moral rights was interpreted. Instead of only being a system arrangement for protecting personality benefits of the author, moral rights are constituting "a compound for inspiring creation, personality rights, property rights and constitutional ideas and protecting public interests". Firstly, moral rights are capable of stimulating non-economic incentives of creation. Secondly, moral rights are implying profound market motives and property values; the publication right has introduced works into the field of economic value; authorship has become a kind of "personalized trademark", and; the right of integrity has prevented the reputational interests of the author from being damaged. Thirdly, moral rights have constituted a legal mechanism for recognizing and protecting freedom of speech, as well as a counterbalance against the concept of commercialized copyrights. Finally, moral rights are characterized by public welfares with regard to the protection of cultural inheritance.In the fourth part, the idea of adjusting moral rights system was discussed. The system should be based on a balance among interests of the author, the follow-up author, the work transmitters and the public. Nevertheless, the proposal of transferring moral rights is infeasible though it allows the author to agree to not to practice relevant moral rights under certain circumstances. Moreover, moral rights are applicable to "fair dealing/use" and restricted by durations. In this way, the basic connotation of moral rights is kept while a balance among interests of all parties is attained by relying on reasonable transformations of the system.