In practice, however, attribution issues are best settled by written agreement. Most publishers and producers are amenable to appropriate credit provisions in a contract. The integrity right is best protected by the Copyright Act and by contract. Section 106 of the Copyright Act provides that the copyright owner has the exclusive right to adapt and prepare derivative works based on her copyrighted work. Unlike a true moral right, however, the adaptation right under copyright is assignable, and therefore authors and artists may be put in the position of having to transfer this right to a licensee or assignee of the copyright.
Contract law is another effective way that authors can protect the integrity of their work.
By contract, an author can grant or reserve rights to make changes, including changes that amount to a distortion. Notwithstanding the lack of real moral-rights protection in the United States, the issue of whether moral rights can be transferred or waived comes up regularly in legal discussions. The future of moral rights in the digital age appears rather dismal. Some believe that the ability to modify and restructure existing works and to create new multimedia works makes strengthening international norms for moral rights more important than ever before. Others take the view that any changes to international norms for the protection of moral rights must be carefully considered in the digital world.