From The United States Copyright Office:
The U.S. Copyright Office has completed its comprehensive study of attribution and integrity rights in the United States. The report presents an extensive review of the U.S. moral rights regime, exploring the current state of attribution and integrity interests—particularly with respect to legal and technological changes since the United States joined the Berne Convention thirty years ago.
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The term “moral rights” comes from the French phrase droit moral and generally refers to certain noneconomic rights that are considered personal to an author. Chief among these rights are the right of an author to be credited as the author of their work (the right of attribution) and the right to prevent prejudicial distortions of the work (the right of integrity). While these rights have a long history in international copyright law, the United States did not consider formal adoption of moral rights until it prepared to join the Berne Convention, which it ultimately did in 1989.
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In reviewing the U.S. framework regarding moral rights protection, the Copyright Office identified three important principles: respecting foundational principles of U.S. law (including the First Amendment, fair use, and limited terms), appreciating the importance creators place on their attribution and integrity interests, and recognizing and respecting the diversity among industry sectors and different types of works.
Link to the rest at The United States Copyright Office
Following are a few excerpts from the full report referenced above:
The landscape of moral rights in the United States is complex. At the time the United States formally agreed to recognize the rights of attribution and integrity with ratification of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (“Berne Convention”) in 1988, Congress relied on a combination of federal and state law protections to do so, electing to forego adoption of a generally-applicable moral rights provision in federal copyright law.
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[A] rich landscape of contractual agreements and other private ordering has risen up to further supplement the protections for authors’ attribution and integrity interests available in the United States; these practices are well-established and vary substantially from industry to industry. Adding to the complexity, the U.S. moral rights patchwork as it exists today also coexists and intersects with important limitations on the economic rights of authors as well as important First Amendment values. In analyzing the U.S. moral rights framework, the Copyright Office embraced three general principles to guide its analysis. First, any potential changes to the U.S. moral rights framework must be harmonized with other critical elements of U.S. law, particularly the First Amendment, fair use, and respect for the constitutional requirement of limited copyright terms.
Second, the vital importance to authors of adequately protecting their attribution and integrity interests cannot be overstated. Third, a review of U.S. moral rights protections must recognize that there is broad diversity among creative industries and categories of works, and that, accordingly, effective moral rights protections are not one-size-fits-all.
Based on all of these considerations, the Copyright Office concludes that many diverse aspects of the current moral rights patchwork—including copyright law’s derivative work right, state moral rights statutes, and contract law—are generally working well and should not be changed. Further, the Office concludes that there is no need for the creation of a blanket moral rights statute at this time. However, there are aspects of the U.S. moral rights patchwork that could be improved to the benefit of individual authors and the copyright system as a whole.
Link to the rest at Authors, Attribution, and Integrity: Examining Moral rights in the United States