Thursday, November 02, 2006
 | So, today I tried to match wits with Judge Kozinski, well known Judge in the 9th Cir. It didn't really work. Well, maybe, but we sorta got in this tautomeric (to use his word) conversation about the right to publicity, and I decided to be polite and not press the argument. After all, I don't want to bring my legal career to a screeching halt. He's not a fan of the right to publicity, and he made that quite clear, and he was asking if anyone wanted to argue for the right to publicity. So, I made the argument that the right to publicity protected a famous person's economic interest against a third party interest. That is, a photographer shouldn't be able to ride on the coat tails of a famous person's image and hard work (case of a famous athlete) just because they were fortuitous to take the pic. Of course, Judge Kozinski argued his side, stating what if the photographer took all this time to make this artsy pic, that, inter alia, it took thousands of shots to get just the right angle; that the photo itself was hard work. Then I rebutted, "well, then you would have to prove that the people are buying the photo for your 'art' and not for the subject matter." His reply, "what if it was part of the artistic process to select the subject matter." I left this alone because I don't think he liked my arguement. Not that it was particularly bad, but he just has a distaste for the right to publicity. But my reply (that i kept to myself): you wouldn't have selected that subject matter if the ball player wasn't so good. This is where the argument becomes tautomeric and could have gone on for awhile. But as my buddy said, nobody would pay for a picture of him in the Jordan "Jumpman" pose. Either way, I was stoked I could get into a conversation with such a Judge. |
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