Moral Rights

The topic of whether the Creative Commons 3.0 licenses are actually capital-F Free is being discussed in wikipedia-land lately. The contention surrounds their inclusion of so-called moral rights. The following is the offending part of all the licenses, including the least limited attribution-only license:

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author’s honor or reputation.

This is, in my opinion, ridiculous. Who is to say what is derogatory? Me? After someone re-uses the work? Wikipedia is currently not allowing 3.0 licenses due to this issue, but the general concept of moral rights is being further examined. Apparently in at least France and Mexico these rights are part of the legal code:

Art. L. 121-1. L’auteur jouit du droit au respect de
son nom, de sa qualité et de son oeuvre.
Ce droit est attaché à sa personne.
Il est perpétuel, inaliénable et imprescriptible.
Il est transmissible à cause de mort aux héritiers
de l’auteur.
L’exercice peut être conféré à un tiers en vertu de
dispositions testamentaires.

Roughly, authors have the right of respect, which is perpetual, inalienable, inviolable, and can be transmitted to heirs or third parties based on a will or testament. Yikes.

Look forward to much more discussion about moral rights in Wikipedia, and probably the rest of the free software movement. Debian may have gone the right direction deciding early that any creative commons is unacceptable.

On a side note, this blog is now GFDL licensed.