What are moral rights? Following the passage of the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2001, all Australians should now be aware of their moral rights – and artists especially so. Moral Right will typically be the concern of artists and authors but when someone writes a letter they become an author and their letter is protected not only by copyright but also by Australia's new Moral Right s legislation. This is so when the letter is a business letter, a love letter and even so when it's a letter to an editor albeit that has yet to be test in a court.

"Moral rights are a type of copyright that are designed to protect the reputation of an [author]. They are 'non-economic' rights as they do not directly confer a financial return. Unlike copyright, moral rights cannot be bought or sold or otherwise traded, Consequently, even though the [author] of a given [text, image, artwork] may have sold (or never owned) the copyright to [the work], she or he is still considered by the law to be the author and thus still retain the moral rights.

There are basically two moral rights.

• The right of attribution (including the right against false attribution). This is the right of the author to be identified as the author of the [work/text] (as well as to object to false identifications). For example, if you print a photograph in a magazine, it is a good idea to print the photographers name next to the image.

• And (2) The right of integrity. The right of integrity is infringed if the work or film is subjected to derogatory treatment which is prejudicial to the author's honour or reputation. Derogatory treatment has been defined to include: 'material distortion, mutilation or material alteration of a work'." <http://www.pictureaustralia.org/c_right.html>.

Moral rights have the same duration as ordinary copyright but the right of integrity ceases to exist with the death of the author.