- 29 rights laws in West Germany have not been criticized for lack of sufficient clarity.4 43 Nor have harmful effects on industry been reported. West Germany has eschewed perpetual moral rights for a term of protection identical to their copyright term. Compared to that of the United States, West German law provides more expansive rights, and West German courts have provided superior moral rights protection in the few reported cases. 3. The United Kingdom. In 1988, after announcing its commitment to do so, the United Kingdom enacted moral rights into English law.44 For some time, the obligation of the Berne Convention Paris Act had caused Great Britain to question whether its moral rights law was sufficient. Four Government reports the Gregory Report, the Whitford Report, the 1981 White Paper, and, finally, the 1986 Green Paper considered the question of moral rights sufficiency. - In the last two reports, the government concluded that, whether or not the case law met the requirements of the previous Berne Acts, the Paris Act of 1971 required statutory moral rights provisions. The term of moral rights is the same as that of the copyright term life plus 50 years following the death of the author, with the exception of false attribution, protection against which expires 20 years after the author's death. Parliament decided to make the moral right assignable, but commentators wonder aloud whether "the scales may have been 30 tilted too heavily against the author's droit moral, leaving him with much less than he would at first sight appear to have. The Paternity Right 145 The new uniform moral rights law is unlike those in civil law countries in several respects. Generally, the law provides that consent and waiver, including informal waiver according to the general law of contract, are acceptable. Not only are rights made waivable, they also must be asserted to be claimed. In addition, in order for someone other than an assignee or one claiming through him to be bound by the obligation to observe the paternity right, that party must have notice of the claim. The paternity right is subject to laches. The right to be identified is subject to exceptions; authors of computer programs, typeface designs, computer-generated works, motion pictures or other works made for hire are excluded. In addition, works used in a fair use context, for example, in news reporting, statutory inquiries, or before Royal Commissions, do not need to identify the author. The U.K. law provides for both positive and negative paternity rights. The right against false attribution is a staple fixture in English the new statutory right terminates twenty years after the author's death, unlike the other moral rights, which endure for the life of the copyright. law, Integrity The U.K. law establishes the right to object to derogatory treatment of a work. This right is further subject to the qualification 45 Dworkin, Moral Rights in English Law Come, 11 EIPR 329, 330 (1986). .. The Shape of Rights to 31 that the distortion or mutilation must be prejudicial to the honor ΟΙ reputation of the author or director, as is the case with the Berne Article 6bis requirement. Moreover, a translation of a literary or dramatic work or an arrangement or simple transposition of a musical work is excluded from consideration as derogatory. A work may be subjected to derogatory treatment by publication, public exhibition, or performance. The right of integrity for models, architectural works, sculpture, or works of artistic craftsmanship may be infringed by issuing two-dimensional copies or photographs representing derogatory treatment of the work, but the only remedy for such treatment of an actual work of architecture is that the author may require that his or her name be removed. Motion picture authors and directors receive fairly substantial rights. Article 80(6) provides: exclusions. In the case of a film, the right [to object to deroga- (a) shows in public, broadcasts or includes (b) issues to the public copies of a Films are also, however, subject to substantial qualifications and In addition to fair use exclusions, and the possibility of disclaimers or waivers, the copyright owner has broad authority to revise the work unless the author has been identified on copies of the work.. The right of integrity may be infringed by persons who knowledgeably possess, distribute, or deal commercially with works that infringe this right, even though the possessor him or herself has not taken any deroga tory action toward the work. Comments on U.K. Lav. The new moral rights law of the United Kingdom is detailed. It remains to be seen how the judiciary will react to this very complex law. One basis for the position that U.S. law is compatible with Article 6bis of Berne was that the U.K., a prominent member of Berne with a system similar to that of the U.S., had no explicit moral rights legislation. Countries in the common law tradition could be said to have carved out moral rights protection through other legal theories. The status of the United Kingdom as a major bastion of noncopyright moral rights changed when they adopted their statute last year. U.K. law is now specific. According to some commentators, the real reason the United States could join Berne without concern about moral rights noncompliance was that there was already substantial noncompliance with Article 6bis on the part of several other Berne member countries. However, the noncompliance of others seems a tenuous base for continuing United States "compatibility."46 46 Ginsberg and Kernochan, "One Hundred and Two Years Later: The U.S. Joins the Berne Convention," 13 Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts (Fall, 1988), 1. The Visual Artists' Rights Act of 1989 would amend the copyright law by creating a new section 106A establishing new moral rights of attribution and integrity. Section 2 of the bill adds to the definition section of title 17 the phrase "work of visual art," which is a new subcategory of pictorial, graphic and sculptural works. Included in this new subcategory are original paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture existing in a single copy, or limited editions of no more than 200 copies, and still photographs produced for exhibition. Excluded are works of applied art and audiovisual works, including motion pictures. Technical works, merchandising items, books, magazines, periodicals, or similar publications are also excluded, as well as works that are made for hire and "works" not subject to protection under the Copyright Act. Section 3, the nucleus of the bill, grants the author the rights of attribution and integrity, independent of copyright ownership. Under this section, the author of a work of visual art receives the right to claim authorship and to prevent use of a person's name on a work he or she did not create. Authors are also given the right to prohibit use of their name on a work of visual art in the event of distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work. The author would also have the right to prevent any destruction, distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation. Finally, section 106A(a)(3) provides that the destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification of works of recognized stature per se is prejudicial to |