1. This text is based on a paper presented in Oxford, in September 2003, at the SLS Conference.
2. Authenticity should not be confused with authentication, an equally important issue in the context of the Internet. Authentication addresses control of access to information resources and is, therefore, grounded in methods of identification of the user. Authenticity is concerned with content assurance and requires methods of identification and verification of the resources themselves.
3. S. Shapin (A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (University of Chicago Press, 1994), engages questions such as how we come to trust our knowledge of the world, or by what means we distinguish true from false accounts, arguing that in seventeenth century England, problems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honour, and integrity. These codes formed an important basis for securing reliable knowledge about the natural world.
4. J. Park, Becoming more authentic: the positive side of existentialism (Minneapolis, 4ed 1999) gives a systematic account of the concept of Authentic Existence as defined in existential philosophy and psychology. See also J. Macquarrie, Existentialism (Philadelphia, PA, Westminster, 1972), which contains a chapter on Authenticity called “In Quest of Authentic Existence”; A. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Stories (New York: Knopf, 1955 and later reprints), which essay contains the substance of Camus' vision of Authenticity.
5. Moral rights arise automatically with the creation of the work and in general cannot be assigned. They allow the author to control the uses made of the work irrespective of assignment of economic rights. Their aim is to ensure the respect for the author's personality as expressed in the work. See inter alia H. Desbois, “The moral right” (1958) 19 R.I.D.A. 121; H. Desbois, Le droit d'auteur en France (Dalloz, 1978) 469-602; G. Dworkin, “Moral rights in English law – the shape of things to come” (1986) 11 E.I.P.R. 329; G. Dworkin, “Moral rights and the common law countries” (1994) Australian Intellectual Property Journal 5. Moral rights, were inserted in the Berne Convention, the fundamental instrument of international copyright law, by the Rome Revision of 1928, and encompass the right to claim authorship of the work and the right to object to any distortion or modification of the work (Berne Convention, Article 6bis).