Privacy
as Property:
News and the Right of Publicity
Craig
L. LaMay
Abstract
The right of publicity, one of Dean Prosser’s
original four privacy torts, has more in common with intellectual
property law than traditional notions of privacy, providing a cause
of action for the nonconsensual appropriation of a person’s
name or likeness for commercial purposes. The law gives media organizations
a defense for the use of such material that is newsworthy, but in
recent years some notable suits have raised the questions of what
constitutes a “news” use and what uses of a person’s
“identity” are actionable. Some plaintiffs have used the
tort to seek damages they could not win under defamation or other
privacy torts, while others have used it to seek to control forms
of expression, such as parody, that would be protected under intellectual
property law. As news organizations become smaller parts of large
entertain-ment conglomerates, the right of publicity may take on
new significance for journalists who once thought the tort a concern
only of advertisers.
Craig L. LaMay,
Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University
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