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The First Amendment And The Right(S) Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman, Robert C. Post
The First Amendment And The Right(S) Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman, Robert C. Post
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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 …
The Right Of Publicity's Intellectual Property Turn, Jennifer E. Rothman
The Right Of Publicity's Intellectual Property Turn, Jennifer E. Rothman
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The Article is adapted from a keynote lecture about my book, THE RIGHT OF PUBLICITY: PRIVACY REIMAGINED FOR A PUBLIC WORLD (Harvard Univ. Press 2018), delivered at Columbia Law School for its symposium, “Owning Personality: The Expanding Right of Publicity.” The book challenges the conventional historical and theoretical understanding of the right of publicity. By uncovering the history of the right of publicity’s development, the book reveals solutions to current clashes with free speech, individual liberty, and copyright law, as well as some opportunities for better protecting privacy in the digital age.
The lecture (as adapted for this Article) explores …
The Right Of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined For New York?, Jennifer E. Rothman
The Right Of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined For New York?, Jennifer E. Rothman
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This essay is based on a featured lecture that I gave as part of the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal’s 2 symposium on a proposed right of publicity law in New York. The essay draws from my recent book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World, published by Harvard University Press. Insights from the book suggest that New York should not upend more than one hundred years of established privacy law in the state, nor jeopardize its citizens’ ownership over their own names, likenesses, and voices by replacing these privacy laws with a new and independent …
Protecting One's Own Privacy In A Big Data Economy, Anita L. Allen
Protecting One's Own Privacy In A Big Data Economy, Anita L. Allen
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Big Data is the vast quantities of information amenable to large-scale collection, storage, and analysis. Using such data, companies and researchers can deploy complex algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies to reveal otherwise unascertained patterns, links, behaviors, trends, identities, and practical knowledge. The information that comprises Big Data arises from government and business practices, consumer transactions, and the digital applications sometimes referred to as the “Internet of Things.” Individuals invisibly contribute to Big Data whenever they live digital lifestyles or otherwise participate in the digital economy, such as when they shop with a credit card, get treated at a hospital, apply …
Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen
Natural Law, Slavery, And The Right To Privacy Tort, Anita L. Allen
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In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding “right to privacy” tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich’s explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in …
The Inalienable Right Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman
The Inalienable Right Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman
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This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the right of publicity is universally and uncontroversially alienable. Courts and scholars have routinely described the right as a freely transferable property right, akin to patents or copyrights. Despite such broad claims of unfettered alienability, courts have limited the transferability of publicity rights in a variety of instances. No one has developed a robust account of why such limits should exist or what their contours should be. This article remedies this omission and concludes that the right of publicity must have significantly limited alienability to protect the rights of individuals to control the …
The Power Of Private Facts, Anita L. Allen
The Power Of Private Facts, Anita L. Allen
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No abstract provided.