Tom wrote: [...]
- publication the creator can control if and how his work gets published. only he may cite from or describe his work in public as long as neither the work nor a description of it are published with his permission. (e.g. even the publisher can't leak stuff without the author's consent)
This is basically copy right as already existed in England, & not one of the moral rights.
- credit the creator must be given proper credit, and he can choose if and what kind of credit (e.g. if he wants to use his real name or a pseudonym)
Yep, this got added to English law (but not US, I think, except for the weird VARA Peter mentioned which only applies to unique original objects)
- defense against disfiguration (?) creator can fight against attacks on the integrity of his work, within limits. this is the complicated part. as I parse it, the intention was that if you, say, write a poem against communism and by some freak accident the communist party adopts it as their hymn, you can stop them from doing so (unless you enjoy the irony of it).
I don't know about the German laws but this is not, I think, the case in most other countries. Just borrowing a poem & using it somewhere else would (at worst) count as parody, which is legally protected speech in the US (& usually in England as well). I think the law is more intended for the Alan Smithee situation, where a publisher (or record company, film studio, broadcaster, whatever) takes a work and changes it so that the author thinks it makes them look bad, and they don't want to be associated with it. I am no expert, but I think up till 1989 in common law jurisdictions this would have to have been pursued as defamation - which in the USA means the aggrieved party has effectively no chance at all, and in England that the side with the most expensive lawyers wins.
to me, the german copyright appears to take much more consideration of the author, while the US copyright system is entirely economical in nature.
That is my general impression. As an example of the sort of nonsense that some countries recognise moral rights to avoid, while Googling around for these things I found this heap of prdroid shit: "... any submission of materials by you will be considered a contribution to Boeing for further use in its sole discretion, regardless of any proprietary claims or reservation of rights noted in the submission. Accordingly, you agree that any materials, including but not limited to questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, plans, notes, drawings, original or creative materials or other information, provided by you in the form of e-mail or submissions to Boeing, or postings on this Site, are non-confidential (subject to Boeing's Privacy Policy) and shall become the sole property of Boeing. Boeing shall own exclusive rights, including all intellectual property rights, and shall be entitled to the unrestricted use of these materials for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgement or compensation to you. The submission of any materials to Boeing, including the posting of materials to any forum or interactive area, irrevocably waives any and all "moral rights" in such materials, including the rights of paternity and integrity." (http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/site_terms.html) Ken PS in English these are "moral" rights - "morale" is borrowed from French and means the mental state of an army :-)