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The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World provides the first serious scholarly analysis of an increasingly important legal claim--the right of publicity. This unwieldy law, often the darling of celebrities, protects against the use of a person's identity without permission. Often erroneously thought to have been created in the 1950s, the law has expanded into a new type of intellectual property right that limits free speech and interferes with authors' use of copyrighted works. Most troublingly, the right of publicity now threatens to undermine the very rights of the individuals it was designed to protect. By revisiting the real story of how the right of publicity came to be what it is today, the author provides a path forward for limiting the right. The book tackles a host of current issues, from the use of celebrities' images on merchandise and in social media, to claims by student-athletes that they should be paid when their likenesses appear in videogames and photographs, to the objections of subscribers to the use of their names and images in sponsored advertisements in social media, to efforts to get one's image and name removed from revenge porn and mugshot websites, to the taxation and control of dead celebrities' lucrative identities.-- Provided by publisher

Americans have long been obsessed with their images—their looks, public personas, and the impressions they make. This preoccupation has left its mark on the law. The twentieth century saw the creation of laws that protect your right to control your public image, to defend your image, and to feel good about your image and public presentation of self. These include the legal actions against invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. With these laws came the phenomenon of \"personal image litigation\"—individuals suing to vindicate their image rights. Laws of Image tells the story of how Americans came to use the law to protect and manage their images, feelings, and reputations. In this social, cultural, and legal history, Samantha Barbas ties the development of personal image law to the self-consciousness and image-consciousness that has become endemic in our media-saturated culture of celebrity and consumerism, where people see their identities as intertwined with their public images. The laws of image are the expression of a people who have become so publicity-conscious and self-focused that they believe they have a right to control their images—to manage and spin them like actors, politicians, and rock stars.

Sports figures cope with a level of celebrity once reserved for the stars of stage and screen. In Game Faces , Sarah K. Fields looks at the legal ramifications of the cases brought by six of them--golfer Tiger Woods, quarterback Joe Montana, college football coach Wally Butts, baseball pitchers Warren Spahn and Don Newcombe, and hockey enforcer Tony Twist--when faced with what they considered attacks on their privacy and image. Placing each case in its historical and legal context, Fields examines how sports figures in the U.S. have used the law to regain control of their image. As she shows, decisions in the cases significantly affected the evolution of laws related to privacy, defamation, and publicity--areas pertinent to the lives of the famous sports figure and the non-famous consumer alike. She also tells the stories of why the plaintiffs sought relief in the courts, uncovering motives that delved into the heart of issues separating individual rights from the public's perceived right to know. A fascinating exploration of a still-evolving phenomenon, Game Faces is an essential look at the legal playing fields that influence our enjoyment of sports.

Since their inception in the late nineteenth century, privacy rights have been widely understood to terminate with a person's death. The \"no-privacy-rights- for-the-dead\" doctrine has been repeated for nearly 130 years. As demonstrated in this Article, the reality on the ground deviated from this common pronouncement even early on. The divergence is so great today that sustained consideration of postmortem privacy is essential. This is especially so given urgent calls to protect the digital assets of the dead and evolving technology that allows for the reanimation of deceased performers and loved ones. This Article provides a theoretical foundation for determining whether, when, and how the law should extend privacy rights after death.

Since their inception in the late nineteenth century, privacy rights have been widely understood to terminate with a person's death. The \"no-privacy-rights- for-the-dead\" doctrine has been repeated for nearly 130 years. As demonstrated in this Article, the reality on the ground deviated from this common pronouncement even early on. The divergence is so great today that sustained consideration of postmortem privacy is essential. This is especially so given urgent calls to protect the digital assets of the dead and evolving technology that allows for the reanimation of deceased performers and loved ones. This Article provides a theoretical foundation for determining whether, when, and how the law should extend privacy rights after death.

Since their inception in the late nineteenth century, privacy rights have been widely understood to terminate with a person’s death. The “no-privacy-rights-for- the-dead” doctrine has been repeated for nearly 130 years. As demonstrated in this Article, the reality on the ground deviated from this common pronouncement even early on. The divergence is so great today that sustained consideration of postmortem privacy is essential. This is especially so given urgent calls to protect the digital assets of the dead and evolving technology that allows for the reanimation of deceased performers and loved ones. This Article provides a theoretical foundation for determining whether, when, and how the law should extend privacy rights after death. We begin by mapping what we call “postmortem privacy,” revealing both the surprisingly wide extension of privacy protections after a person’s death, and the haphazard, inconsistent, and at times incoherent state of the law. We then interrogate the array of interests that could justify postmortem privacy rights. We first situate this analysis in the law’s “jurisprudence of exclusion,” which withholds rights from entities that lack traits deemed essential for rights ascription. We then consider why, despite the initial impetus to deny rights to the dead, the law increasingly gravitates toward doing so. The best reasons to extend postmortem privacy are rooted not in the ongoing interests of the dead, but instead in the interests of the living and society. In particular, living individuals have interests in the treatment of their future deceased selves that we denominate the interests of the “future-decedents.” The living also have interests tied to their deceased relatives and loved ones that we designate the interests of the “relational-living.” Finally, society has a collective interest in treating the dead with respect. Postmortem privacy, however, must be bounded both to accommodate competing interests and also to ensure that it appropriately furthers its objectives. Accordingly, in its final part, this Article explores important limits on the scope of postmortem rights, including boundaries of eligibility, standing, temporal duration, and the competing interests of the living, including the freedom of speech. Ultimately, we conclude that there are convincing reasons to recognize postmortem privacy rights. However, the current law, by focusing on commercial value after death as the prime basis to extend rights, is off kilter. Postmortem privacy should be for everyone, not just the famous, and should empower survivors and future-decedents to limit the commercialization of the dead. Instead, the current system incentivizes unrelated companies to exploit and profit from the dead without meaningfully protecting postmortem privacy. Our analysis frames a markedly different normative and practical vision than the one we have today and provides a foundation on which to build a more coherent, fair, and predictable postmortem privacy.

The right of publicity protects persons against unauthorized uses of their identity, most typically their names, images, or voices. The right is in obvious tension with freedom of speech. Yet courts seeking to reconcile the right with the First Amendment have to date produced only a notoriously confused muddle of inconsistent constitutional doctrine. In this Article, we suggest a way out of the maze. We propose a relatively straightforward framework for analyzing how the right of publicity should be squared with First Amendment principles. At the root of contemporary constitutional confusion lies a failure to articulate the precise state interests advanced by the right of publicity. We seek to remedy this deficiency by disaggregating four distinct state interests that the right of publicity is typically invoked to protect. We argue that in any given case the right of publicity is characteristically invoked to protect (one or more) of these four interests: the value of a plaintiff's performance, the commercial value of a plaintiff's identity, the dignity of a plaintiff, or the autonomous personality of a plaintiff. Plaintiffs' interests in their identity must always be weighed against defendants' constitutional interests in their speech. We therefore isolate three constitutional kinds of communication, each with a distinct form of First Amendment protection. A defendant's misappropriation of a plaintiff's identity can occur in public discourse, in commercial speech, or in what we call \"commodities.\" We then discuss how constitutional protections for these three kinds of speech should intersect with the four different interests that right of publicity claims are typically invoked to protect. The upshot is not a mechanical algorithm for producing correct constitutional outcomes, but an illumination of the constitutional stakes at issue in any given right of publicity action. We hope that by carefully surfacing the constitutional and policy stakes that beset the conflict between right(s) of publicity and the First Amendment, we have sketched a map that might substantially assist those who must navigate this tumultuous terrain.

Artificial intelligence has contributed to music composition since the 1950s. Its contributions evolved from machines that produced simple melodies to programs that generate accurate vocal imitations of singers. Modern artificial intelligence relies on pre-existing--and often copyrighted--songs to create new music, the most common of which include vocal imitations of popular singers. Copyright law in the United States has yet to address how copyright holders' rights are implicated when artificial intelligence programs are trained on protected works. As a result, these rights holders across disciplines and sectors have filed complaints alleging infringement of their works. While copyright holders await their fate, singers whose voices are imitated by artificial intelligence soundalikes should look to another source of protection: the right of publicity. This right strikes the balance of providing relief for singers while allowing artificial intelligence music generation to develop as a tool for musicians. This Comment examines the current landscape of U.S. copyright law as it pertains to music and identifies areas lacking and affording protections for copyright holders. Copyright law will then be applied to the Al-generated soundalike song, \"Heart on My Sleeve.\" Due to the uncertainty surrounding copyright protections, this Comment proposes that singers should turn to the right of publicity. Recognizing that this is an imperfect solution given the current patchwork of state laws providing this right, this Comment proposes a framework for a federal right of publicity.

[...]the IRS concluded that the activities of many collectives do not, by design, qualify for tax-exempt status. From a practical standpoint, this means that tax-exempt collectives must not operate for the benefit of private interests (including those of student athletes at a specific college or university) and that the organization's net revenues may not be paid to any private individual (or group of private individuals). [...]the IRS noted that, in many cases, compensation for NIL activities \"is the very justification for the organization's existence.\"