Whose Who? the Case for a Kantian Right of Publicity

HAEMMERLI TO PRINTER 01/12/00 11:21 AM Duke Law Journal VOLUME 49 NOVEMBER 1999 NUMBER 2 WHOSE WHO? THE CASE FOR A KANTIAN RIGHT OF PUBLICITY ALICE HAEMMERLI† ABSTRACT Rapidly developing technological opportunities for unauthorized uses of identity—from “virtual kidnapping” to digitalcasting—coin- cide with growing demand for a preemptive federal right of publicity that can replace the existing welter of inconsistent state laws. Progress is impeded, however, by intractable doctrinal confusion and academic hostility to the right as allegedly inimical to society’s cultural need to manipulate celebrity images. Because the right of publicity is tradi- tionally based on Lockean labor theory and analogized to intellectual property in created works, it is vulnerable to such attacks; to date, no serious attempt has been made to elaborate an alternative philosophical justification that can withstand them. In this Article, Dean Haemmerli uses Kantian philosophy to justify an autonomy-based right of publicity. In doing so, she challenges both the traditional approach to the right of publicity and its postmodernist critiques. First, the Article’s proposed reconception of the right of publicity rejects the existing doctrinal bifurcation of publicity and privacy rights and explicitly embraces both the economic and moral fac- ets of the individual’s need to control the use of his identity. Second, † Dean of Graduate Legal Studies and International Programs, Columbia Law School. A.B., Vassar College; M.Sc., London School of Economics; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University; J.D., Columbia Law School. Thanks to Mike Dorf, George Fletcher, Jane Ginsburg, Kent Gre- enawalt, Ken Jones, John Manning, Henry Monaghan, Jeremy Waldron, and, in particular, Robert Ferguson, for their helpful comments on various drafts, and to Jack Kernochan for his encouragement. 383 HAEMMERLI TO PRINTER 01/12/00 11:21 AM 384 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 49:383 by grounding the right in personal autonomy rather than purely pecuniary interests, the Article gives it greater weight in the balance against competing First Amendment considerations. At the same time, in or- der to contain potential abuses of a more expansive right, the Article considers First Amendment, fair use, and first sale doctrine limitations and incorporates various elements of these limitations into proposed legislative language establishing a preemptive federal right of publicity. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................385 I. A Right Ripe for Reform...............................................................392 A. State Law Lacunae...............................................................393 B. Zacchini’s Inadequacy.........................................................401 C. Compensation and Commodification................................403 D. Doctrinal Muddles ...............................................................404 E. Preemptive Legislation .......................................................409 II. The Right of Publicity as an Autonomy-Based Property Right ......................................................................................411 A. Philosophical Underpinnings: The Right of Publicity and Immanuel Kant..................................................411 1. Kant’s Philosophy ...........................................................414 2. Kantian Property.............................................................417 3. Idealism and Property ....................................................423 B. Implications of an Autonomy-Based Right of Publicity .....................................................................428 III. The Kantian Right and the Postmodernist Challenge................430 A. Celebrity Image and Fame..................................................430 B. Cultural Recoding................................................................431 C. Demystifying Postmodernism: Self-Expression and Celebrity Merchandise.............................................434 IV. The Right of Publicity and the First Amendment.......................441 A. Analytical Factors................................................................441 1. Commercialism and Commercial Speech ....................441 2. Alternative Avenues of Expression..............................448 3. Status of Plaintiff.............................................................452 a. Public figures, truth, and actual malice ...................453 b. Newsworthiness..........................................................455 4. Summary ..........................................................................456 HAEMMERLI TO PRINTER 01/12/00 11:21 AM 1999] A KANTIAN RIGHT OF PUBLICITY 385 B. Applying the First Amendment to the Right of Publicity .....................................................................457 V. A Balanced Right of Publicity.......................................................459 A. A Threshold Test: Taming Identity ...................................459 B. Copyright Applied to the Right of Publicity ....................464 1. Fair Use............................................................................464 2. First Sale Doctrine ..........................................................473 VI. Legislating a Viable Federal Right of Publicity ..........................477 A. The INTA Draft....................................................................477 1. The INTA Text ...............................................................478 2. Comments on the INTA Text .......................................480 a. Persona, indicia, identifiability .................................480 b. Commercial use in commerce...................................481 B. Adding Performance Value, Fair Use, First Amendment, and First Sale.....................................485 C. Federal Preemption...............................................................487 Conclusion ..............................................................................................487 Appendix ................................................................................................489 INTRODUCTION “It’s not mysterious,” said the famous professor. “Suppose that a car company, intent on emphasizing celebrities in its advertisements, discovers that Eddie Murphy drives one of its models. It publishes ads with pictures of Murphy in his car. Since the ads are truthful and cap- ture Murphy behind the wheel of the car—which is a fact—it is hard to imagine any real issue other than an economic one; Murphy wants to charge for such exposures.” Although the professor’s view of publicity rights is widespread,1 it is misguided. The right of publicity can also be viewed as a property right grounded in human autonomy.2 As such, it belongs to all—in- cluding celebrities who commodify their images3—and it embraces 1. See infra notes 26-31, 84-96, 101 and accompanying text. 2. See infra Part II.A.1-2. That is, it is the right of “inviolate personality” articulated in Charles D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis’s seminal article, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 193 (1890), discussed infra note 83. As Part II will show, this right is reconcilable with a right to compensation for advertisements for taco chips, televisions, and portable toilets. See infra text accompanying notes 166-70, 186-88. 3. See infra Part I.C. HAEMMERLI TO PRINTER 01/12/00 11:21 AM 386 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 49:383 noneconomic objections to the commercial exploitation of identity.4 Eddie Murphy might take issue with the use of his image in the ad for many reasons. He might intend to change car brands; he might dislike the advertisements; or he simply might not wish to appear in them. The point is that the use of his image should be his choice, and that his choice is ultimately justified by his humanity. Whether his objection is economic or moral, he should have a right to voice it.5 This Ar- ticle presents the case for an expansive right of publicity, an autonomy-based property right that breaks with the traditional view of the right of publicity as a solely pecuniary interest in the exploitation of identity.6 In several respects, this Article is countercultural: not only 4. See infra text accompanying notes 26-31 (defining the right of publicity as the right to exploit the commercial value of personal identity), and text accompanying notes 163-70 (defining the right to one’s image as an innate right based on idealist personality theory). 5. This is not to say that Murphy’s objection will necessarily result in suppression of the ad. My quarrel with the professor, rather, is with his characterization of Murphy’s objection as exclusively economic. Whether the ad can survive the objection is a question of balancing the right of publicity against First Amendment considerations. See Theodore F. Haas, Storehouse of Starlight: The First Amendment Privilege to Use Names and Likenesses in Commercial Ad- vertising, 19 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 539 (1986). Haas makes a cogent argument as to why, in the final analysis, “an advertiser should be able to use a person’s name or likeness without consent as part of a truthful statement about a legitimate product.” Id. at 572. I treat this argument in greater detail later. See infra text accompanying notes 294-96. 6. That is, I propose doctrinal recognition of a right of publicity that allows its owner to object to commercial exploitation of her identity on both moral and economic grounds, rather than having

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