There has been a bit in the news recently about the updating of Roald Dahl’s books, which involves an interesting question of moral rights in the form of integrity of authorship. Now there’s another book-related issue in the news that raises different moral rights issues.
A book listing blunder
It has been reported by ABC News that award-winning Tasmanian author Lian Tanner found a listing on Amazon for a book, Rita’s Revenge, that exactly reproduces the title and cover of her own children’s book. However, the Amazon listing attributes that book to a different author, Emilio M Parks.
It appears from the news article that while the listing displayed the cover of Ms Tanner’s book, including having Ms Tanner’s name on the cover, the listing description attributed Mr Parks as the author.
In a further twist, while Ms Tanner’s book is 351 pages, Mr Parks’ Amazon listing describes the book as being only 25 pages. That raises some questions:
The moral rights question
Regardless of the truth about Mr Parks’ book, there is a moral rights issue here. In Australia, moral rights arise under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), but do not form part of copyright. Moral rights are a collection of three rights:
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