Moral Rights

In 1990, the U.S. Copyright Act was amended and [only] visual artists were named possessors of "moral rights".

The term "moral right" was adopted as the direct translation of the French term "droit moral", which was established in the nineteenth century. Still, there are voices pointing out that the so called moral rights could follow the German term "Urheberspersönlichkeitsrecht" and be called or rather described as authorial rights of personality.

According to an even more specific statement, the French singular term droit moral, which stems from the notion that some of the artist's spirit is injected into his or her creations, "connotes an indivisible package of rights, as distinguished from the plural 'moral rights', reflective of the current American concept of divisibility".

While in Europe it was philosophical ideas about personhood that dominated the moral rights theory, in USA the theory was "rationalized with societal goals", since certain scholars believed that the concept of droit moral was inconsistent with the economic-based rights theories that were and always are governing in USA.

Στις φωτογραφίες (εκτός από την πρώτη που είναι βιτρίνα ανθοπωλείου) είναι έργα της Στέλλας Μελετοπούλου, από την έκθεσή της "Αόρατα νήματα" στη Γκαλερί Σκουφά.


Τα κείμενα είναι από το:

Elina Moustaira, "Art Collections, Private and Public: A Comparative Legal Study", Springer, 2015, p. 22, 23.