Welcome to the Rebel Rider Review here in the year 2012. As you can see the topic is "The Right to Publicity" or is otherwise known too as "personality rights".
What exactly is "Right to Publicity" or personality rights? These rights really walk hand in hand with the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of The United States of America . Right to Publicity or personality rights are rights of individuals to remain in the private sector and to be left alone. These are also rights in which no other person, government, or organization may use an individual's name, picture, image, demeanor, mannerisms, or voice for any commercial venue. This includes even the venue of the IRS or other government agency from selling an individual's name or registered documents for monetary gain. This also means commerce of any sort without express "Written permission" from the individual himself.
Needless to say, use of the name in legal terms, even in the court systems constitutes a hearsay tort, which is non-admit-able since the individual himself has no first hand knowledge of ownership of that name. The name was not chosen by that person, but was given to them by a third party before consciousness was acquired. Right of Publicity, in this sense, can be applied to the admissibility of birth dates associated with the name, as the individual was told about that too, by a third party. In the interpretive Legal Court System, these are hearsay issues and not admissible, until consent has been given for their use. So as you can see, these issues walk hand in hand together and in conjunction with the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which were also Creator given and no man can take away.
Right to publicity has been deemed in the courts as a separate entity from registered copyright and registered trademarks. Use under copyright and trademark laws allow usage as long as no detrimental damage comes out of the usage. As long as no significant gain is realized from the usage of the name, picture, image, or voice, then usage is allowed within limits. When significant gains are realized then Right to Publicity does indeed kick in.
If a person's name, picture, image, or voice is used for monetary gain, then the person who was offended may claim all or a fair percentage of the gains monetarily by those offending entities. The main reason for this is, because the offending entities did not ask for permission for the usage and got that permission in writing.
Right to publicity or personality rights are mainly maintained through the separate States (approximately 12- 15 as of this writing) under statutes, torts, common, and civil law. So far nothing has been set up under Federal law, but I would think that apportionment of the law between the states would accommodate that. In other words, Precedent of Law would be relevant in most situations, especially in jury trials. The precedent could then be transferred from one State to another at that point.
As with Sovereignty, the Right to Publishing will have its challenges until more and more people become more familiar with its usage for the benefit of all mankind.
