Integrity is wrong — internal contradictions.

If moral rights are Rights of Impression Management, some form of the right of integrity is essential to their function. One cannot manage the social self without regulating, to some extent, its use, modification, etc. At the same time, however, the empirical view of the social self is one that changes based on audience interpretation, something that the author cannot totally control.

How much control depends, as it does in all other moral rights, on the strength of the underlying justification of the Investment Theory. On the one hand, then, the right of integrity must persist in some form—in a form that enables the author to manage the presentation of her externalized self. On the other hand, this is unlikely to be anything as strong as it is in France, where the right allows the author to object to “any alteration or modification, no matter what its importance.”166 If a modification has no importance to the maintenance of the social self—but instead relates only to some idiosyncratic tendency of the author—then moral rights seem unlikely to protect it. This conclusion is reinforced by the view of the externalized self as empirical and negotiated rather than fixed and dictated. Based on the foregoing, conceiving of moral rights as Rights of Impression Management suggests the integrity right may be important, but it is unlikely to include rights to prevent violations as such. This means moral rights likely will not include the rights to prevent distortions as such, mutilation as such, modifications as such, impairments as such, and uses that violate any of the aforementioned rights (AR1a, AR2a, AR3a, AR4a, AR5a). The remaining two types of integrity rights protect the author’s honor and reputation (ARnb) and intellectual and personal interest (ARnc). Turning our attention to honor and reputation (ARnb): for the moment, let us set aside the differences between “distortion,” “mutilation,” “modification,” and “impairment,” and focus instead on only the idea of prejudice to honor or reputation. Would moral rights as Rights of Impression Management endorse this standard of harm? Does honor or reputation accurately capture the harm against which Rights of Impression Management attempt to protect?

The short answer is not entirely. One reason is that relevant concepts of harm to honor or reputation require a value judgment about (1) the work, (2) the author, and (3) the relationship between the two. Moreover, each value judgment must be a positive or good one. Honor seems to suggest both some necessary positive association and the potential for a duel. At the very least, the term sets out a distinction between honorable and dishonorable behavior, with the latter potentially not counting. Reputation, while not necessarily leading to duels, also seems to require a positive assessment of the work. Both seem to presuppose some standard of behavior that merits protection.

Positive value judgments do not seem to be required to present and manage a social self. Moral rights should protect externalized social selves whatever the artist’s behavior. It is true, of course, that moral rights may be more or less robust depending on the notoriety or publicity of a particular externalized social self. The social self of an artist known for impressionist art may be at greater risk than an unknown one. But the fact that her art is viewed as honorable or reputable should not, strictly speaking, bear on whether she has moral rights. If one really cares about the relation between the author and the work—or the author qua author, whatever that means— then they should take seriously every author, good and bad alike.167 These conceptual shortcomings notwithstanding, reputation does seem to capture at least part of what protecting the social self is all about. Reputation taps into both what the author thinks and what others think. Fundamentally, the right of integrity is about the managing the conversation of uses that change the working consensus—that create a difference between what the author perceives as her externalized self and the potential for the modified work to alter this perception in the mind of others. Of course, establishing one’s reputation has been harmed requires one to show an initial consistency between what the author claims is distorted and what others already perceive. But once done, the right is designed to protect potential distortions between this relation between work, other, and author.

For example, recently Hayley Williams explained that her band’s (Paramore) music suggested she was bubbly when in fact she thinks of herself as the opposite.168 If her song is used in a way that suggests she is introverted, should she have a claim? Reputation is likely to encompass what the public thinks rather than what Hayley thinks about herself personally. But since Hayley also understands and seems to roughly agree with the public about her externalized self, her claim may fail.169 Control over use in such cases does not prevent an inconsistency from developing in the working consensus between work, other, and author. There may be other cases, however, where such control does prevent an inconsistency from arising. In such cases, the question is whether a justification of the Investment Theory can support providing the author with management control over the uses that cause, or threaten to cause, the inconsistency. Not commenting on this justification, though, does not prevent all analysis of the integrity right. Here it is helpful to divide the right of integrity into two broad categories.

170 One we might call a structural right of integrity. This would focus on the work and alterations to the work itself. For example, deleting chapters of a book or altering an image by changing its colors would violate this right, so conceived. The second we might call a semantic right of integrity. Violations of this right would occur when, even though the work is unchanged, it is presented in a way different from that authorized by the author. Most commonly, commentators seem to think that this occurs when a use or presentation violates the “spirit” of the work, or the work’s meaning (as intended by the author). We can imagine each of the ARs described above falling within either of these conceptions (e.g., ARs1-5 and ARc1-5).

Viewed this way, three immediate implications of moral rights as Rights of Impression Management become visible. First, the right of integrity will almost certainly in practice resemble a structural right of integrity, rather than a personal one (i.e., a right to the integrity of one’s person). Moral rights focus on the externalized social self, which is the self that appears in the work. Because moral rights provide the author a means for managing this social self, they must also give the author the rights to manage, to some degree, the form of the work. Therefore, the right of integrity must include the structural right.

Second, this structural right will be tied to the semantic right. The semantic right is a right about the work’s meaning, whatever that meaning is. If the structural right is one in form only, it would not effectively provide the author with any managerial authority over uses of the work that clearly deviated from the working consensus. As a result, the structural right must depend on the semantic right.

Third, the semantic right of integrity will likely be different from the one described above (such as in France). One will not violate the semantic right by using the work in a way inconsistent with its “spirit”, or the author’s intended “meaning.” As noted above, the author cannot fix the meaning of the work, even if she intends the work to have a particular meaning. Instead, the semantic right will relate to a standard that judges whether a particular use violates a particular version of the externalized self. This version is not whatever version the author wishes it to be, though what she wishes it to be may be an important consideration. At bottom, however, what the externalized self is will be an empirical question about what the work is taken to be both by others and the author.

While the practical implementation of these rights is beyond the scope of this Article, one could imagine using survey evidence to evaluate the “working consensus” of the externalized self. Unlike surveys in trademark law, however, surveys in this context would not evaluate the source of the product. Instead, the survey’s task would be to propose and evaluate consensus around the meaning of the externalized self. We can further imagine that survey evidence would be needed only after showing a structural right violation. That is, the author would have the burden of proving a structural right violation. Once shown, the author would then have the burden of showing that the semantic right had been violated.