Moral Rights and Economic Rights — What Kind of Right Is a Name

Melody

In the civil-law vocabulary, "author's right" is a rope of two strands: moral rights (bound to the author's name) and economic rights (bound to money). Their temperaments differ — so the law handles them differently.

(Structure, not legal advice.)

Moral rights: they follow the person

Chinese law grants authors four moral rights:

Right of disclosure: deciding whether a work is made public;
Right of attribution: deciding how one's name appears (real name, pen name, none);
Right of revision: deciding whether and how the work is altered;
Right of integrity: objecting to distortion or mutilation.

Their common trait: generally non-transferable, not subject to buyout, and not limited by protection terms — attribution does not vanish when economic rights expire.

Economic rights: they follow use

Economic rights are a list of uses: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, screening, broadcast, network communication, adaptation, translation, compilation… each one "an action that can be taken".

Their common trait: transferable, licensable, and time-limited (expiry sends the work to the public domain — see how duration works).

A crucial distinction: which strand did you buy?

"I sold you the whole song" cannot mean *everything* under the system: what transfers is usually the economic strand; attribution and integrity stay with the author.

This explains daily matters:

Attribution is a duty, not politeness: reposting, covering, adapting — the original name goes on;
"How it was changed" matters to someone: mockery that distorts touches the integrity right, regardless of money;
"Buyout" has edges: a contract can say much, but it cannot delete the author from the work.

Difference from the common-law world

The civil-law "author's right" is author-centred with a strong moral strand; the common-law "copyright" began more as an economic tool — the right to copy — with limited moral rights added later.

Chinese law sits closer to the former: four moral rights, explicitly listed. So when reading English materials on "moral rights", note: not one thing — close cousins from two traditions.

Listen: an "attributed alteration"

Variation is where moral and economic rights meet: how much change makes a new work, how much becomes distortion — law gives the frame, practice gives the measure. Hear a structure built for "add and subtract".

Another shape of "altering": sampling and transformation.
How open licences handle attribution: the CC licence family.
The least changeable core of a work: Melody.

Listen in the library

Im Gegenwärtigen Vergangenes, D.710C15:34Attribution binds to the work — a song's name often carries both poet and composerDetailsChorale BWV 11/6C10:44Editorial work on a chorale — what later hands may do, and how the original author standsDetailsAria variata in A minor BWV 989C122:38An aria with variations — where moral and economic rights meetDetails

All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).

Sources

本文为中国著作权法「著作人身权／财产权」二分结构的通识介绍，与英美体系的差异为通行比较法学表述，不构成法律意见
涉及的曲目均标注来源与许可档位，可在线试听

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.

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