Talk:Moral rights in United Kingdom law/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs · count) 22:23, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Lead

• "Moral rights in United Kingdom law are rights that exist as part of United Kingdom copyright law ...". So rights are rights? Who'd have guessed. And why do we need to repeat "United Kingdom"? Can we not just say something like "Moral rights in United Kingdom law are part of that country's copyright law ..."?

• "... the right to be identified as the author of one's work". Can we not rephrase that so as to avoid the personal pronoun? Perhaps something like "the right to be identified as the author of a work"?

• "... this right [paternity] exists for the entire term of copyright ...". We were already told that in the previous sentence.

• "encyclopaedias". I think we've lost the battle on that spelling. Still, at least we won it with "aluminium"

• "The right of integrity protects the authors of copyrighted works from having their works altered in such a fashion as to constitute a 'distortion' or 'mutilation' of the original work". Wherever a quotation appears, even if it's in the lead, it has to be cited. I'm assuming that "distortion" and "mutilation" are quotes, rather than just being enclosed in scare quotes? The "works ... works" is a bit awkward as well. What about something simpler, such as "The right of integrity protects authors from having their copyrighted works altered in such a fashion ..."?

Definition

• "Evolving from the French droit moral, moral rights are rights under copyright". Moral rights are rights? Hold the front page!

• That second sentence is a real monster. Can it not be split up?

• "... there is still much debate over how far the rights should go". Debate amongst whom? Lawyers? Copyright holders? MPs?

Right to be identified

• "These exceptions were included as a result of lobbying by the publishing industries". That plural looks really strange. How many publishing industries do we have?

• "... the right to be identified is granted to the director rather than the original writer". What is that "original" trying to tell the reader? The director isn't a writer, original or otherwise.

• "Some specific types of work within these categories are not protected by this right, particularly works made to report current events, periodicals, newspapers or encyclopaedias". I can't quite get my head around that sentence. We were talking about types of work (literary, dramatic and so on), but all of a sudden and without prior warning we're now talking about newspapers and periodicals. Are we talking about the newspaper, for instance, or about something published in the newspaper?

• "These exceptions were included as a result of lobbying by the publishing industries, and the fear that the need to name the author of a current events report could interfere with its speedy delivery, and undermine the image of the news as objective and neutral." Ignoring for the moment the idea that perhaps very few would regard the news as "objective and neutral", in what way might attribution undermine anything?

• "Once the right to be identified has asserted". Should that be "has been asserted"?

• "... it applies for the duration of the length of copyright". Obviously some redundancy there: duration is a length.

• "For the right to be infringed, the author must show that the author has not been properly identified". That "author ... author" is really awkward.

• "Specific circumstances require attribution". How can a circumstance require anything, much less attribution?

• "An author or a literary or dramatic work has the right to be identified". That doesn't really make sense. Should it be "author of"?

Right to object to derogatory treatment

• "This is because the alternative – simply looking at distortion and mutilation as individual concepts – could lead to issues due to the highly subjective nature of the words". What "issues"?

• "Derogatory treatment must also have occurred in circumstances where the author is protected from it". That doesn't really work for me. Do we mean when the author has the right to be protected from it, or something like that?

• "If the work is an artistic one, the author is protected when the derogatory treatment is commercially published ...". I'm no lawyer, but this and similar claims in this section don't seem right to me. Surely the author is protected under the law at all times, not just when something is published or whatever?

• "Other judges have supported the theory ...". Misuse of the word "theory" is one of my bugbears. Theories are testable by experiment and can therefore be disproven. What we're talking about here is different interpretations of the law, not a theory.

• "Another exception allows for the alteration of work in order to avoid committing a criminal offence, such as those under the Obscene Publications Act 1959." The plural/singular switch is rather jarring there: a criminal offence vs. those. What about something like "such as one of those defined by the ..."? And do we really need the wordy "in order to" rather than the more direct "to"?

Right to privacy

• "The right to privacy found in copyright law ...". This whole section seems very clunky to me. Another example: "This right lasts for the length of the copyright". Well yes, of course it does. And do laws "operate" rather than apply?

  I think I've fixed and clarified all of the points other than this one and the "objective and neutral" point; the argument there seems to be that requiring newspapers, websites or news organisations generally to provide "this report was written by [blotto]" could make the news appear subjective. If all the BBC reporting in Libya is done by Robert Fisk and is reported as "the BBC says that..." it's (apparently) interpreted as the opinion of an organisation with an interest in presenting neutral information. If it's reported as "Robert Fisk thinks that..." it comes off as the subjective opinion of one guy with a microphone. Re the right to privacy; I've fixed the first and last points. On the second point (this right lasts...) it's actually important to mention that. A lot of moral rights do not last for the duration of copyright; some last for life plus 20 (as opposed to a copyright term of life plus 70). Ironholds (talk) 07:27, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.