How does the moral right of a creator in a work made for hire interact with the copyright owner's rights to make use of their property?
(Question edited to include the definition of "integrity", and to frame the hypotheticals within that definition).
In France and Germany (and possibly other countries) the moral rights of an author or artist cannot be waived. These rights include attribution and integrity. It seems to me that an employee, even an ex-employee, could use this to hold their employer to ransom for any creative work they were involved in.
The moral right of integrity is defined in the Berne Convention as
The preserving of the integrity of the work allows the author to object to alteration, distortion, or mutilation of the work that is "prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation".
Some hypotheticals to illustrate the problem I see:
Alice works for an advertising agency. She takes a photograph in the course of her work, which is therefore a work for hire and commercial rights are owned by the agency. However the agency then wishes to use this photograph in a campaign for a company to which Alice objects on ethical grounds. Can Alice use her moral rights to prevent the use of her photograph in this way?
Bob works for a software company. He is the primary author of a product sold by the company, but then he leaves the company. Can he use his moral rights in the integrity of his source code to prevent the company from subsequently modifying the software without his permission to include a feature to which he has a moral objection, or the release of a new version which has a lot of bugs?
Charlie was a junior programmer working with Bob. Although Bob did most of the work and provided the overall architecture, Charlie contributed some parts while working under Bob's supervision. Can Charlie also use his moral rights to prevent the company modifying the software?
This question is related, but its about attribution rather than integrity.
Also, The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer describes how one programmer did indeed assert his moral rights in this way, albeit not under the law:
They wanted Mel to modify the program so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console, they could change the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked. He felt this was patently dishonest, which it was, and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer, which it did, so he refused to do it. The Head Salesman talked to Mel, as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging, a few Fellow Programmers. Mel finally gave in and wrote the code, but he got the test backwards, and, when the sense switch was turned on, the program would cheat, winning every time. Mel was delighted with this, claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical, and adamantly refused to fix it.
Real Programmers apart, this isn't an issue in countries where moral rights are not recognised, or can be waived in the employment contract (provided corporate legal don't drop the ball). However if moral rights cannot be waived then any company hiring creative people would seem to have a problem.
