Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Whitewashing Expression: Using Copyright Law To Protect Racial Identity In Casting, Brandon Johnson

Northwestern University Law Review

Porchlight Music Theatre, a non-equity theatre company in Chicago, decided to capitalize on the popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit Hamilton by producing one of Miranda’s earlier works, In the Heights. This earlier work tells the story of a predominantly Latinx community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Porchlight’s production, however, received significant negative attention when it was revealed that the lead character—Usnavi, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic—would be played by a white actor. While casting white actors in nonwhite roles is nothing new and has been a persistent (and persistently criticized) practice in both theatre and film, …

Disentangling The Right Of Publicity, Eric E. Johnson

Northwestern University Law Review

Despite the increasing importance attached to the right of publicity, its doctrinal scope has yet to be clearly articulated. The right of publicity supposedly allows a cause of action for the commercial exploitation of a person’s name, voice, or image. The inconvenient reality, however, is that only a tiny fraction of such instances are truly actionable. This Article tackles the mismatch between the blackletter doctrine and the shape of the case law, and it aims to elucidate, in straightforward terms, what the right of publicity actually is.

This Article explains how, in the absence of a clear enunciation of its …

Derivative Works 2.0: Reconsidering Transformative Use In The Age Of Crowdsourced Creation, Jacqueline D. Lipton, John Tehranian

Northwestern University Law Review

Apple invites us to “Rip. Mix. Burn.” while Sony exhorts us to “make.believe.” Digital service providers enable us to create new forms of derivative work—work based substantially on one or more preexisting works. But can we, in a carefree and creative spirit, remix music, movies, and television shows without fear of copyright infringement liability? Despite the exponential growth of remixing technologies, content holders continue to benefit from the vagaries of copyright law. There are no clear principles to determine whether any given remix will infringe one or more copyrights. Thus, rights holders can easily and plausibly threaten infringement suits and …