Intellectual Property
Moral rights waiver
Moral rights are your right to be named as the creator and to object if someone mangles your work. They are separate from ownership and, in the UK, cannot be sold, only waived in writing, so a contract often asks you to waive them. If author credit or portfolio use matters to you, this is the clause to check and, where possible, soften.
What to look for
Whether the contract asks the freelancer to waive their moral rights (the right to be identified as author and to object to derogatory treatment of the work), and whether that waiver is absolute or leaves room for credit and portfolio use.
How Clause rates it
Wording you can ask for
The Freelancer waives moral rights in the deliverables to the extent necessary for the Client's normal commercial use, save that the Freelancer retains the right to be identified as author where reasonably practicable and to display the work as a portfolio sample under the portfolio-rights clause.
The UK angle
Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, moral rights (ss.77-85) cannot be assigned but can be waived in writing; commercial contracts routinely include such a waiver.
See this on your own contract.
Paste your contract and watch these rules light up your own clauses.