The Catalogue of the Author's Moral Rights
Article 17 of the Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights sets out the author's personal non-property rights in detail. The author is entitled to be recognized as the author of the work and to demand such recognition on every copy or in any form of use — the right of authorship. The author may indicate a pseudonym instead of the name, demand such indication, and decline any mention of the name — the right to the name. Only the author decides when, where and in what form to make public the fact of the work's creation. The author may permit other persons to introduce changes into the work itself, its title or the author's name, and may object to changes made without consent — the right of integrity. The author is entitled to protect the work against any distortion or other violation that may harm the author's honour, dignity or business reputation. Finally, the author may demand the cessation of use of the work — the withdrawal right, which does not extend to works made in the course of employment. Together these rights form the personality core of copyright: they attach to the author as creator, not to the work as commodity.
The Withdrawal Right and Its Financial Consequences
The withdrawal right is the only one in the catalogue whose exercise the law expressly places at the author's expense. The author must compensate the user of the work for the damage caused, lost profits included, and must publicly declare the withdrawal. The author may also, at his or her own expense, withdraw from civil circulation copies prepared earlier for sale, rental or other transfer of ownership. This mechanism allows the author to reconsider the work's presence in the market at the price of compensating the injured party — and precisely for that reason the withdrawal right does not extend to works made in the course of employment, where the commissioning party's interests counterbalance the author's creative freedom. An author contemplating withdrawal should therefore weigh both the compensation exposure and the public declaration that the law requires as an inseparable element of the act.