Right of Personality

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makare

For my Intellectual Property Law class we have to write a brief paper about whether the Right of Personality should extend to everyone. I thought it might be fun to discuss it on the forum.

If you don't know what the Right of Personality is wiki actually explains it alright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
Basically it is one of those things that helps bolster "Right to Privacy" which we don't actually have. Allowing them to control how their image is used. It usually applies only to famous people whose image or personality is tied into their livelihood.

My opinion is it would be nice if everyone got the right but with facebook and the internet people kind of forfeit it. Constantly. The only thing keeping the Right to Privacy afloat is the "reasonable expectation of privacy". What reasonable expectation can someone claim to have if they post pics on Facebook? The concept gets to be pretty silly. Even if they had the right how would it be enforced? On this forum itself we post and repost image memes, most derogatory, of people who were unfortunate enough to allow their image to get online. I would like those people to have recourse to protect their image but I can't fathom how to enforce their rights. I guess my stance on it is this is just another death knell for that shaky Right to Privacy. Trying to expand it at this point would be pointless.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
The thing about privacy is, even outside a political frame of reference, the more dense/crowded the area, the harder it is to maintain. It's easy to have your privacy if you're the only person for miles in any direction, it gets hard if you are in a crowded urban area. What urbanite hasn't ever heard something "private" through a wall, floor, or ceiling?

When technology enters into the equation, as many people say, it "makes the world smaller." This is one of the reasons I don't use broad social media such as facebook or twitter or myspace - I enjoy not being effortlessly, intensely scrutinized. And not just by strangers, either.

Just as a suitcase is not a bank, facebook is not a photo album (the physical kind you can keep on a shelf, with the electro-sticky plastic pages I mean). For all its passwords and privacy settings, it's pretty much a de facto public forum. Meaning that anything that is put there is tantamount to it being displayed in front of an audience of millions. Facebooking is an implied, and damn near explicit, forfeiture of privacy.

The only way to win is not to play, Professor Faulken.
 
Tress

Tress

Wow, Gas. It's always fun to find things about which you and I agree. I couldn't have said it better myself.
 
Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

I feel that the Right to Privacy is one of those things that most people have, until they give it up themselves. Taking your Facebook example: if people REALLY wanted their information to be private, they wouldn't put it out there.

Think on those people on this board who truly desire privacy - they don't post photos, they give out the merest hints of their personal experiences. In this example, if Shego wanted to make a legal case against applying "Buscemi eyes" to her photos with her face blanked out, that would apply under Personality rights, correct? Shego doesn't because a) she understands it to be in good fun and b) she has far more interesting ways of resolving that issue, in any case.

Personality rights seem to me to be a case of people worrying too much about what people think of them. I know there's photos and videos of me out there, being libelous/slanderous in nature - it's entirely possible that there's a video of me on Youtube, falling under someone's idea of "police brutality."

Personally, I feel that people are going to think what they want, and no amount of court control is going to change their minds. It's excessive and unnecessary.
 
M

makare

Yeah it isn't every day gas is agreeing with me either. So this thread just got, as the kids say, epic.
 
strawman

strawman

Facial image recognition and image search algorithms are improving at an exciting pace. Tineye, Google, and many companies are working on this, and similar, problems with images, audio, and even video.

We don't need to assume the problem is impossible. If it is now, in 5-10 years it probably won't be.

Or, in other words, just because it's hard doesn't mean we should give up on it.

/devil's advocate
 
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