Last updated 12 February 2026
Moral rights are personal rights that belong to the creator or author of a work. A key feature of moral rights is that they are inalienable, which means that they remain with the author even though the copyright in a work may have been assigned to a third party. The two new moral rights introduced by the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000 (Cth) are the right of attribution (the right to be named as author of a work) and the right of integrity (the right to object to derogatory treatment of a work). The third moral right is the right not to have authorship falsely attributed. Protection for both the right of attribution and the right of integrity applies to all works protected by copyright which existed on or after 21 December 2000, except films and any works included in films. There is no protection for films created before that date.