Project:The copyright status of Wittgenstein’s works: Difference between revisions

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 Additional restrictions may make the picture more complicated.
-One such restriction is what we call “moral rights”. Moral rights have to do with the author’s dignity as such and with their unique relationship to their work. The definition of moral rights also varies across jurisdictions, but most often they include the right of attribution and the prohibition that works be remixed in a way that negatively affects the author, their image, or their reputation. This wording may seem to forbid adding a moustache to a reproduction of ''Mona Lisa'' or creating a horror version of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'', but in practice such things are widely accepted, as long as it is clear that the parody or distortion is attributable to the remixer, and not to the author. Moral rights have no import as far as copyright and the public domain are concerned, and no financial import whatsoever. In some countries, they do not expire.
+One such restriction is what we call “moral rights”. Moral rights have to do with the author’s dignity as such and with their unique relationship to their work. In some countries, they do not expire. The definition of moral rights also varies across jurisdictions, but most often they include the right of attribution and the prohibition that works be remixed in a way that negatively affects the author, their image, or their reputation. This wording may seem to forbid adding a moustache to a reproduction of ''Mona Lisa'' or creating a horror version of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'', but in practice such things are widely accepted, as long as it is clear that the parody or distortion is attributable to the remixer, and not to the author. Moral rights have limited import as far as copyright and the public domain are concerned: insofar as they entail the obligation to attribute authors, for example, they do restrict the scope of what cen be done with public domain works, since by the definition of public domain alone attributing authors whose copyright expired would not be compulsory;<ref>The author of this essay would like to thank Dr Nicolas Bell of Trinity College for providing a comment thanks to which the early, incorrect wording of this sentence was corrected.</ref> however, they entirely lack the characteristic feature of copyright laws that has to do with establishing someone’s monopoly on a set of works. Moral rights have no financial import whatsoever.
 Another set of restrictions may arise from the fact that, even after copyright expires, ownership of the original specimen remains. Thus, for example, the Louvre may well forbid visitors to take photos of its paintings – even though most of the works in the museum are out of copyright – simply because they have the authority to dictate the house rules; on the other hand, they have no authority to forbid us to freely share, modify and even sell the faithful reproductions of public-domain two-dimensional works that can be found on their very website. In the case of Wittgenstein, his originals have several different owners – the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge; the Austrian National Library, Vienna; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Noord Hollands Archief, Haarlem; the Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University Library, Hamilton<ref>''{{plainlink|[https://wittgenstein-initiative.com/unesco-certificate-and-nomination-form/ UNESCO Certificate and Nomination Form]}}'', Wittgenstein Initiative, 25 January 2018, retrieved 16 July 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220716093211/https://wittgenstein-initiative.com/unesco-certificate-and-nomination-form/ archived URL]}}).</ref> – but this also has no import as far as copyright and the public domain are concerned.