Taking Robert Post's seminal article 'The Social Foundations of Reputation and the Constitution' as a starting point, this volume examines how the concept of reputation changes to reflect social, political, economic, cultural and technological developments. It suggests that the value of a good reputation is not immutable and analyzes the history and doctrines of defamation law in the US and the UK. A selection of Australian case studies illustrates different concepts of defamation law and offers insights into their specific nature. Drawing on approaches to celebrity in media and cultural studies, the author conceptualizes reputation as a media construct and explains how reputation as celebrity is of great contemporary relevance at this point in the history of defamation law.
Landmark Cases in Defamation Law is a diverse and engaging edited collection that brings together eminent scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand to analyse cases of enduring significance to defamation law. The cases selected have all had a significant impact on defamation law, not only in the jurisdiction in which they were decided but internationally. Given the formative influence of English defamation law in the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the focus is predominantly on English cases, although decisions of the United States and Australia are also included in the collection. The authors all naturally share a common interest in defamation law but bring different expertise and emphasis to their respective chapters. Among the authors are specialists in tort law, legal history and internet law. The cases selected cover all aspects of defamation law, including defamatory capacity and meaning; practice and procedure; defences; and remedies.
Much of the real value in the entertainment industry today lies in franchises – fictional universes, entertainment concepts, reinventions of cultural traditions and celebrity – that create an ongoing presence in the marketplace. The entertainment franchise now shapes the global cultural landscape. However, scholars have devoted little attention to how intellectual property law has changed or is being stretched in practice to accommodate this type of creativity and form of enterprise. Covering law and practice in jurisdictions such as the UK, the EU, the USA, Australia, Spain and the Caribbean, this collection explores the 'fit' of intellectual property laws with specific franchises and tracks the way creators and entrepreneurs work around law's limitations. Case studies include mega-film franchises, fan activity, hip-hop, the management of celebrity reputation, flamenco, 'Disneyfied' theatre, film and television funding, arts festivals and 'carnival in a box'.
Sports figures cope with a level of celebrity once reserved for the stars of stage and screen. In Game Faces , Sarah K. Fields looks at the legal ramifications of the cases brought by six of them--golfer Tiger Woods, quarterback Joe Montana, college football coach Wally Butts, baseball pitchers Warren Spahn and Don Newcombe, and hockey enforcer Tony Twist--when faced with what they considered attacks on their privacy and image. Placing each case in its historical and legal context, Fields examines how sports figures in the U.S. have used the law to regain control of their image. As she shows, decisions in the cases significantly affected the evolution of laws related to privacy, defamation, and publicity--areas pertinent to the lives of the famous sports figure and the non-famous consumer alike. She also tells the stories of why the plaintiffs sought relief in the courts, uncovering motives that delved into the heart of issues separating individual rights from the public's perceived right to know. A fascinating exploration of a still-evolving phenomenon, Game Faces is an essential look at the legal playing fields that influence our enjoyment of sports.
Providing comparative analysis that examines both Western and non-Western legal systems, this wide-ranging Handbook expands and enriches the existing privacy and defamation law literature and addresses the fundamental issues facing today’s scholars and practitioners. Comparative Privacy and Defamation provides insightful commentary on issues of theory and doctrine, including the challenges of General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the impact of new technologies on the law.
This book argues that moral rights provisions in copyright law rest on a misunderstanding, or romanticisation, of the role of the author. The Romantic conception of authorship, as a lone genius, creating from nothing, sensitive and vulnerable, has helped publishers push for strong copyright reform. But is this conception borne out in practice – especially in a world of meme culture, of artificial intelligence generated art and poetry, and of open source and fan fiction? This book probes the romantic vignette of the author through its legal adoption. Moral rights are rights that attach to the non-economic – for example, intellectual or emotional – interests of an author in their work. Much like defamation, moral rights see the right of reputation as superior to the right of freedom of expression. However, unlike defamation, moral rights are not protecting against defamatory actions against a person. In most jurisdictions, they are provisions set within copyright regimes; regimes whose purpose is to incentivise innovation. Challenging the way we think about authorship and how it should be protected by law, the book draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary examples to demonstrate how moral rights can constitute a barrier to transformative creativity. While authors and artists require strong rights to protect their ability to earn an income and incentivise creativity, moral rights, the book argues, may in turn actually harm their ability to do so. This timely criticism of moral rights will appeal to researchers, students, policy makers and lawyers working in the area of intellectual property law, as well as legal theorists, sociolegal scholars and legal historians with relevant interests.
Defamation and privacy are now two central issues in media law. While defamation law has long posed concerns for media publications, the emergence of privacy as a legal challenge has been relatively recent in many common law jurisdictions outside the US. A number of jurisdictions have seen recent defamation and privacy law reforms, which have often drawn on, or reacted against, developments elsewhere. This timely book examines topical issues in defamation and privacy law focused on media, journalism and contemporary communication. Aimed at a wide legal audience, it brings together leading and emerging analysts of media law to address current and proposed reforms and the impact of changes in communication environments, and to re-examine basic principles such as harm and free speech. This book will be of interest to all those working on commonwealth or US law, as well as comparative scholars from wider jurisdictions.
