The Soul of Creativity: Forging a Moral Rights Law for the United States

About the Book

In the United States, human creativity is historically understood to be motivated by economic concerns. However, this perspective fails to account for the reality that human creativity is also often the result of internal motivations having nothing to do with money. This book addresses what motivates human creativity and how the law governing authors' rights should be shaped in response to these motivations.

On a practical level, it illustrates how integrating a fuller appreciation of the inspirational dimension of the creative process will allow us to think more expansively about legal protections for authors. Many types of creators currently lack the legal ability to compel attribution for their work, to prevent misattribution, and to safeguard their work from unwanted modifications. Drawing from a number of diverse sources, including literary, philosophical, and religious works, this book offers real solutions for crafting legal measures that facilitate an author's ability to safeguard his or her work without entirely sacrificing the intellectual property policies in practice in the United States today.

About the Author :
Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor of Intellectual Property Law and the Founding Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law & Information Technology at DePaul University College of Law.

Review :
"American copyright law attempts to strike a balance between protecting author's rights and preserving the public domain. In an insightful new book, Professor Roberta Rosenthal Kwall offers a new perspective to this ongoing conversation ... This engaging book will undoubtedly encourage people to reconceptualize author's rights in a more holistic fashion." - Harvard Law Review "Professor Roberta Kwall's book brings together a wealth of academic literature and case law analysis to make the argument for a more fully developed and rounded moral rights regime in the United States." - Shubha Ghosh, IP Law Book Review "The Soul of Creativity would be a welcome addition to any intellectual property firm's library. [Also recommended] for all academic law libraries, as their faculty and students will find it a unique and valuable addition to the more standard copyright fare." - Alicia Brillon, Law Library Journal "Far beyond a purely legal study, Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, in a truly interdisciplinary fashion, analyzes philosophical, psychological, cultural and, yes, theological reasons why authors, even in our postmodern world, merit protection of their moral or spiritual interests." - Adolf Dietz, International Review of Intellectual Property and Copyright Law "Roberta Kwall is one of our country's leading advocates for bringing Continental European moral rights - the legal protection of authors' expressive autonomy and personal connectedness with their creative work - into US copyright law, a regime steeped in a utilitarian understanding that too readily overlooks the noneconomic aspects of creation and expression. In this lucid and eloquently argued book, Kwall presents a clarion call for recognizing moral rights and a nuanced, concrete blueprint for how they might be adopted in the United States in a manner consonant with our copyright and free speech traditions." - Neil Netanel, UCLA School of Law