Moral rights in Canadian copyright law.(Feature Report on The Arts and the Law)

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One of the better known copyright lawsuits in Canada surrounds the Michael Snow sculpture of geese attached to the ceiling of the downtown Toronto Eaton Centre. In this case, the Eaton Centre tied red ribbons around the necks of the sixty geese in Flight Stop as a Christmas decoration. The artist, Michael Snow, was not aware of this alteration to this work nor did he consent to it. Snow went to court and won.

Beyond Economic Rights

Although the Snow case was a copyright infringement, it was, to be precise, an infringement of a specific kind of copyright protection known as moral rights. Moral rights are distinct from the copyright or economic rights in a copyright-protected work. Both international and domestic copyright laws provide for "moral rights." Whereas the purpose of economic rights are to provide some money--payment for rights in copyright--to the author/copyright owner, the purpose of moral rights is to protect the personality or reputation of an author (and not necessarily the owner) of a copyright-protected work. …