Attributions is wrong — no connection exist and internal contradictions.

Generally, the attribution right includes the right to prevent the affixation of a non-author’s name to a work (AR2). It is not clear, however, whether the right on my account also includes any of the other rights mentioned above (AR3-6).150

Orthodox moral rights scholars tend to think that the right of attribution does not entail the right to prevent the author’s name from being affixed to another’s work (AR5) or being identified as the author of such a work (AR6d), though some French courts have decided otherwise. 151 The rationale, like that for moral rights generally, is that central feature that deserves protection—the connection between the author and the work— does not exist. In other words, the right not to be known as the author of another’s work—either by the affixation of the author’s name or otherwise—cannot be based on the connection between the work and the wrongly-named-author because no connection exists. (The actual author, of course, still has a claim for a violation of her attribution right.) Similar reasoning applies to the rights of anonymity and pseudonymity (AR3-4 and AR6a-b, d): the author’s connection to the work gives them a right to insist on attribution and authorship, but not to insist on hiding that connection. These rights as applied to authorship (AR6) are not particularly clear. Adeney has remarked that, at least in France, the right to “respect for . . . [the author’s] authorship”152 refers to (1) the author’s right to have his titles, academic qualifications etc[.] mentioned in association with the work, and (2) the author’s right to be known as author rather than as some other participant in the work’s production, and as the sole author rather than co-author (if this is the case).153

As I have mentioned above, these rights seem to track all of the above-listed rights (AR1-5) in application. Which, if any, of above-listed rights (AR1-6), ought to exist on this new account? If the attribution right is designed to aid the author in presenting and managing her social self, then it will have at least the author’s rights to require that the author’s name appear on her work and that a non-author’s name not appear on the work (AR1-2). If the author is able to manage her externalized self, she must be able to distinguish her externalized self from others’. This requires her to tell the public when it should recognize her as part of her externalized self. Hence, she should have some version of a right to control whether her name or another’s name appears on her work. A slightly different but related problem arises when a non-author’s name appears on the work (AR2): the public will think that the work is another’s self—rather than the one the author intends to present. In this case, enabling the author to prevent this initial (mis)impression seems like a reasonable right to provide the author if our goal is to allow the author the limited ability to present and manage her social self. This seems to hold true regardless of how strong or weak the justification of the Investment Theory.154

Relatedly, when an individual’s name appears on a work she did not create, there is again a kind of false presentation. Here the individual is presented as the author when she in fact is not. The individual has lost her ability to manage her externalized social self because one such self is being represented as hers when it is not. Once more it seems reasonable to provide Rights of Impression Management to the individual to prevent her name from appearing on another’s work (AR5). It is also important to note that in this situation another right is also violated: the actual author’s right to have another’s name not appear on the work (AR2).155

What, then, about the author’s right to use a pseudonym or to publish anonymously? Here there are arguments pushing either way. On the one hand, some orthodox theorists argue the author has no right to publish a work without a self associated with it. A pseudonymously or anonymously published work, on this theory, has no self with which to associate. Because there is no harm to the author’s actual self, the thought goes, there is no basis for a moral rights violation.

On the other hand, the social self is empirical and not abstract—there is no “true self,” only selves that the author is known by. It is not inconsistent to say that an author’s social self can exist without a name or by another name. The other interprets the work and constructs a social self—one that the author plays a part in constructing through publication of the work. Nothing about the social self requires the audience to know the precise person who created the work.156 This would also cover situations where the author “pretends” to be a particular person by leaving authorship unknown or using a different name. Although the social self is not directly connected to the person the audience knows as the author, it is still one of the author’s social selves. The other constructs a version of the self “behind” the art because, assuming it is human-generated, the other has no psychological choice. 157 Therefore, it is at least not implausible that the Rights of Impression Management will include an attribution right that includes the rights to publish it under her own name (AR1), anonymously (AR3), or pseudonymously (AR4).158

Three issues emerge from this discussion. The first is a question of scope. Just how broad or narrow this right will be, however, depends on the underlying normative justification for the right. Should it apply to computer programs? Only works where the public is likely to see the author’s name? Only works where it is practical to include a name? These questions must be bracketed for now.

The second is the issue of “fake” artists or those that deliberately create identities (or lack of identities). How one resolves this question depends, as noted above, on one’s view of the social self. But it also depends on whether there are any relevant differences between the externalized self attributed to the author and those that are anonymous or pseudonymous. For example, the self that is harmed for the anonymous or pseudonymous work may have different characteristics than the eponymous one. Some of these characteristics may alter how the social self is constructed and maintained. As a result, they may justify stronger moral rights for works attributed to the author than those with anonymous or pseudonymous attribution. The third issue is that the right to prevent the author’s name from appearing on another’s work (AR5) and the right to prevent a non-author’s name from appearing on the work (AR2) may seem like trademark concerns masquerading in copyright’s clothes.159

There is, however, an important difference between moral rights of attribution and trademark law causes of action. In particular, the rationale for moral rights—though it can be couched in the language of consumer confusion—is something different than that motivating trademark law. It is not just that the “consumer” may be “confused” about who the author is; it is that the author’s self has become someone else’s. And this not only harms the author economically, but it allows a distortion and/or dilution of her externalized social self. In one sense it denudes the self of selfhood at all. For how can one be known as X if one cannot be known at all, or if one is known as another self? That is not to imply that confusion is irrelevant here. Confusion certainly plays an important role, both in motivating the concern and seeking to remedy it. But consumer confusion, as trademark law defines it, is not the touchstone for the decision. The rationale for preventing an element of confusion in authorship, in other words, is not like the one at play in trademark law.160

A final note: given the limitations and assumptions of my methodology, I cannot address whether my account includes a general “right of authorship” (AR6), or any of its formulations. The best we can do is suggest that the foregoing analysis of the rights mentioned (AR1-5) will likely apply to general “right of authorship” (AR6).