I see that Public Knowledge is blogging about moral rights and the CleanFlicks decision today.  Tim Schneider asked in a question to my first post on this whether stricter European copyright laws are justified out of moral rights. I’m not sure if that’s historically true, but a system that derives copyright from some moral or intrinsic right of the creator is bound to be far stricter than one that derives copyright as a type of monopoly subsidy in support of a social policy.

The language of copyright issues in the U.S. today sounds more like the a moral rights approach than the laws read. When politicians and content producers talk about Infringement as theft, they’ve transformed copyright infringement into a kind of malum in se, rather than a kind of malum prohibitum.

Thoughts?

Posted by M in Interesting Link, Copyright, Fair Use