personality rights

DeepFakes and False Lights: what does the law say?

February 3, 2019

What do Scarlett Johansson, cyber intelligence experts and some law makers have in common? Their shared concern about AI-generated videos. This post is from February 2019. For more recent commentary, view the deepfakes tag. Known as “Deepfakes,” these videos can have damaging impact on reputations, emotional health, and even national security. But what is the legal status of this disruptive – and oftentimes disturbing – technology? Deepfake – which combines “deep learning” and “fake” – is commonly defined as an artificial intelligence-based human image synthesis technique. Put simply, it’s a way to superimpose one face over another. In December 2017, an anonymous…

Photos of Oxford Student Celebrations Raise Questions About Privacy Rights and Journalism

October 14, 2018

Dear reader, This post was originally published on 14 October 2018, and subsequently deleted on 24 October 2019, after an interested party contacted me and asked that any reference to them in my blog post be removed. I chose to delete the post in its entirety to avoid any further problems. I stand by what I wrote and shared, including the watermarked images from a stock photo company for illustrative purposes, an image from Flickr, and screen captures of newspaper headlines on a related subject. I also quoted information that the individual had already manifestly made public themselves in statements to…

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Fame and fortune: how do celebrities protect their image?

November 25, 2017

Famous movie stars and athletes earn big bucks beyond their day job at the studio or stadium. Their image can be used to in a variety of commercial contexts, ranging from endorsements and sponsorships, to merchandising and deals with fashion brands and magazines. Marketwatch reports that on average, signing a celebrity correlates to a rise in share prices, and a 4% increase in sales. After Chanel signed Nicole Kidman in 2003 to promote their N°5 perfume, global sales of the fragrance increased by 30%. Celebrities today spend a huge amount of time and energy developing and maintaining their public image. But here in the…

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Reputation: Taylor Swift’s protections under American and English defamation law

November 9, 2017

this post is featured on the University of the Arts London’s intellectual property blog, creativeIP.org ♫♬ Now we’ve got problems / and I don’t think we can solve them (without lawyers…) The right to freedom of expression is not an absolute right: there are certain restrictions in place to protect an individual’s reputation. But those restrictions vary significantly, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. Considering the shared legal traditions of the United States and Great Britain, their differences on the issue of free speech is surprising. In early September, PopFront published an article entitled “Swiftly to the alt-right: Taylor subtly…

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