Authors’ rights
Copyright constitutes a monopoly of the author over the exploitation of his or her work. The license contract sets the way the work will be used or the author may decide to publish his or her work under the public license (see Creative Commons).
Copyright guarantees the authors:
- respect for their moral rights
- respect for their economic rights
Moral rights
Moral rights protect the author with respect to their intellectual and personal ties to the author’s work. They are tied to a specific natural person – the author. They cannot be transferred to any other person, even the author himself is not entitled to transfer them. Moral rights are applicable during the life of the author and expire with his death. Even after author’s death nobody is allowed to claim authorship over his work.
Author´s moral rights include:
- The exclusive right to decide about the publication of the work.
- Recognition of authorship – the right of attribution (i.e. the right to be mentioned as the author of the work, but also to use a pseudonym or remain anonymous).
- Right of integrity – respect for the author´s work (i.e. not using the work in a way that reduce its value) and refusal of any modification or distortion of the author´s work.
Employee works or Commissioned works are exemptions to the moral rights.
Employee work – work, which author created while performing duties to the employer. Economic rights to the employee work belongs to the employer. Moral rights to the employee work remain with the author (i.e. right of integrity, protection against the distortion of the message of the original work, right for modify and being listed under the author’s name).
Commissioned work is a work that was created on the contract of work basis. It applies that the author has provided a license for the purpose resulting from the contract, unless otherwise agreed.
Economic rights
Economic rights are applicable during author’s life and 70 years after author's death. Economic rights cannot be waived from the author. When a license agreement is settled, the author is only obliged to tolerate interference with his economic right to use the work by another person to the extent resulting from the agreement.
Economic rights apply to all subjects protected by copyright. They do not relate only to authors and performers, but also to publishers, sound and audio-visual creators, broadcasters and database creators, publishers of previously unpublished works.
For example:
- The right to decide on the use of work.
- Reproduction of the work, its distribution, rental, lending, exhibition, communication to the public.
- The right to grant another person consent to exercise this right (see License agreement).
- Right to renumeration.
- The right to a so-called "decent settlement", or the right to a share of the proceeds for the resale of an original work of art.