Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2025
This chapter examines the moral foundations of personality-based justifications for intellectual property, emphasizing the alignment of intellectual works with individual autonomy and self-expression. Unlike utilitarian or labor-desert arguments, the personality-based approach views intellectual property as an extension of the creator’s personality, granting moral claims over divulgation, attribution, integrity, and withdrawal. A central wrong-making feature of violating the rights of attribution and integrity is that, in the typical case, a form of misrepresentation or fraud occurs. Additionally, it is argued that creators have a justified right to control downstream uses of their intellectual works, rooted in autonomy, free speech, and the prevention of misrepresentation or fraud. Along with considering various challenges, a contractarian framework is adopted that promotes legislative protections safeguarding the dignity, autonomy, and expressive freedoms of creators.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.