GPL and Moral Rights

[Alex Hudson]

On Sun, 2003-08-31 at 09:23, João Miguel Neves wrote:
> > If moral rights are not transferrable, I don't see why the estate would
> > inherit them.
>  
> It's in the portuguese law, and probably in others. Upon the author's
> death, the state is responsible for defending the paternity and
> integrity of works.

Hmm, that sucks.

> The baviera state (Germany) has been using this "inheritance" to prevent
> the (re)publication of Hitler's "Mein Kampf". It caused a bit of a stir,
> because this was the first case of using copyright to systematically
> prevent the distribution of a book.

I guess that answers the question then - moral rights could prevent a
piece of software being published/modified. Sadly, there doesn't appear
to be anything we could do about it though. 

I do wonder what the system is in this country. I was under the
impression the Berne Convention recognised some moral rights, but our
laws appear to explicitly exclude computer programs from having such
rights attached.

Cheers,

Alex.