The Moral Rights of Authors and Artists

Moral rights are held by authors and artists under copyright laws around the world and serve to recognize their role and rights as creators.

In the technological context, these rights have acquired a new importance. Moral rights respond to a growing public need for the integrity of knowledge, while providing much-needed support in the struggle against copyright piracy. Crucially, they affirm the basic human dignity of authors and artists everywhere. They offer the potential for new approaches to copyright conflicts - for harmonizing public and private interests, commercial and cultural priorities, copyright and Copyleft, through a time-tested and universally relevant idea.

Moral Rights of Authors and Artists: From the Birth of Copyright to the Age of Artificial Intelligence tells the story of moral rights as the idea developed through the ages, from their antecedents in Asia and Europe to their modern emergence in British and European copyright laws, and their recent, reluctant yet powerful acceptance in the United States. It paints an unparalleled comparative picture of copyright law, reaching from North America to Australia and New Zealand, India, Japan, Korea, and all across Continental Europe - drawn from the author’s rich international experience, and her practical insights as an author and artist herself. Above all, this book explores the unprecedented relevance of moral rights in the age of artificial intelligence, where they can help to affirm the importance of human creativity at its most vulnerable. It is a powerful work of illumination and advocacy.

Mira T. Sundara Rajan, Visiting Professor, UC Davis Law School

Mira T. Sundara Rajan is a Canadian expert on copyright law whose work has influenced legal developments around the world. She holds a DPhil in Law from Oxford University and acts as a consultant on complex copyright matters. Her past academic appointments include the Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Property Law at UBC, where she was also a tenured Associate Professor of Law, and a Professorship of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Glasgow, where she was also the director of the LL.M. program in ’Intellectual Property and the Digital Economy’. Mira is a regular visitor at leading universities in the United States, UK, Europe, the Far East, and India, a country with which she has a deep connection. Mira became involved in copyright as a result of the unique situation surrounding the works of Indian national poet C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), her great-grandfather. She is both an advocate for authors and artists, and an author and musician herself.