Good decision in another trivial case. Who will end this plague?
Against Monopoly
defending the right to innovate
Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.
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Posthumous "Rights of publicity" revisited
Marilyn Monroe is dead but her image lives on as intellectual property and a source of wealth? link here Perhaps no longer. Photographers and other owners of her images have paid license fees to her estate under California law. Now, however, she has been declared a citizen of New York by the Los Angeles Federal District Court because the estate had argued to the California tax man that she was a New York resident. In California, the "rights of publicity" continue after death, but not in New York. The estate will appeal but grounds have yet to be stated.
[Posted at 04/07/2008 07:04 AM by John Bennett on IP as a Joke 
comments(3)]
Comments
The dead have no need of privacy (constraint against unauthorised publicity), but then we still need to be careful not to incentivise someone's death as a means to circumvent their privacy.
[Comment at 04/07/2008 08:44 AM by Crosbie Fitch]
If the dead have no need for privacy, what does it mean "to circumvent their privacy"?
[Comment at 04/07/2008 05:17 PM by Bill Stepp]
I was talking about incentivising "someone's death". Clearly that 'someone' is still alive and has a natural right to privacy, and more importantly a natural right to life. Contriving their death could be considered a means of circumventing that privacy right - if corpses have no right to privacy. So, for that reason, I would support a grace period - especially for unnatural deaths. Perhaps 20-50 years?
So, for Marilyn Monroe, whose death was quite unnatural, I think even a 50 year grace period would soon be coming to an end (2012).
[Comment at 04/08/2008 01:52 AM by Crosbie Fitch]
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