Moral Rights: Diagnosis and Rehabilitation

摘要

Moral rights have provoked an unusual amount of attention from American scholars. Most of this scholarship, this article included, promotes the adoption of the expansion of moral rights in various forms. In spite of this advocacy, moral rights have a relatively weak influence on American law. VARA's protections are narrow, and only a handful of cases have applied the statute since its inception in 1990.rnMoral rights protection in the United States is largely insufficient. A narrow federal statute combined with a patchwork of ill-fitting common law legal theories does not sufficiently protect the personal interests of the artist or author. Consequently, creators remain susceptible to having their reputations diminished and the quality of their works tarnished through misuse by owners. If legislative reform proves unavailing, the best hope for strengthening protections may lie in viewing moral rights through a lens that is readily analogous to established laws and principles. Otherwise it may be just a matter of time before an enterprising entrepreneur exploits the weakness in current protections, harming a major work of art for the purpose of short-term financial gain.