Thursday, August 30, 2007

If I did it, what are my moral rights?

OJ Simpson's interest in If I Did It has been transferred to the family of Ron Goldman, which has changed the cover to minimize the If and added a subtitle: Confessions of the Killer. (Slate story here.)

I am guessing that this would not fly in a moral rights jurisdiction, being somewhat prejudicial to Simpson's honor and reputation. Does it matter that Simpson used a ghostwriter -- whom he has blamed for some of the more explosive details? Does it matter if, in the judgement of critics such as Timothy Noah, that "[t]hese alterations are truer not only to the facts of the case but also to the manuscript itself"?

Noah points out that the Goldman family didn't edit the content of the copy he read, but it seems that it would have had the right to do so, creating derivative works at will, subject only to the constraints of defamation law.

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