Letter: Give us our rights

Sir: Successive British governments have been proud of their record on human rights, but we still don't uphold Article 27 of the Universal Declaration: "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author".

In this country such productions are treated as commodities. Publishers and producers can and do demand, under the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act, that authors assign all their rights and waive their "moral rights" to be identified and to object to derogatory treatment of their work. Additionally, there are no moral rights whatever in the reporting of current affairs.

This is not just a question of authors' pride, or injured pockets. Moral rights provide a framework for the authenticity of all cultural works, including news reporting, in all forms, providing for their contents to pass between living, breathing human beings. It is thus also a question of confidence for consumers, and of the trustworthiness of the news which informs our democracy.

Moral rights are the foundation of intellectual property law in 13 of the 15 European Union states. Our own Copyright Act was contested vigorously by the Labour Party in opposition, but lobbying by media companies determined to resist legislation which hindered their outright ownership of "product" won the day. A moral rights regime in which concern for the authenticity of works is shared by publishers and authors would go a long way towards restoring the public's trust in newspapers.

We urge Tony Blair's Government to reform the law and call on the European Commission to harmonise towards the moral rights regime accepted by the majority of EU states.

If action is not taken, and deregulated media companies continue to enjoy the power to trade works and manipulate them as they see fit, we risk seeing the English-language part of Europe's cultural and historical heritage passing into a shamelessly manip-ulated and commercialised imitation of itself.

STEVE BELL

JANE BOWN

MAUREEN DUFFY MICHAEL FRAYN CHARLES GLASS

MIKE JEMPSON

CHRIS MULLIN MP

ALAN PLATER

PENNANT ROBERTS

BAZ TAYLOR

AIDAN WHITE

JEANNETTE WINTERSON

Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society

London EC1