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Protecting image rights in the face of digitalization: A United States and European analysis
Author(s) -
Heugas Alix C.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the journal of world intellectual property
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.334
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1747-1796
pISSN - 1422-2213
DOI - 10.1111/jwip.12194
Subject(s) - publicity , acknowledgement , face (sociological concept) , legislation , human rights , political science , jurisdiction , law , law and economics , variety (cybernetics) , scope (computer science) , pace , fundamental rights , sociology , computer security , computer science , artificial intelligence , social science , geodesy , programming language , geography
The star of the movie “Rebel without a Cause,” James Dean, died in 1955. Yet the latest film he will officially be credited in, dates back to no sooner than 2020. Indeed, the movie “Finding Jack” will incorporate a hologram of James Dean, resurrected from the dead to play a character in this brand new performance under his name. This does not represent an exceptional singular case however. Technology is advancing at a drastic pace; which legislation sometimes struggles to keep up with. The novel ways of digitally reproducing human beings have brought along with them serious questions concerning Personality Rights protection. These rights diverge considerably from one jurisdiction to another, on a variety of topics such as the acknowledgement of posthumous protection or the scope of the right to privacy versus publicity rights, for example. This paper offers an evaluation of these rights, based on a comparative analysis across different civil and common law countries, which will hopefully provide an insight into how image rights are being safeguarded at present. The paper concludes proposing a potential future framework to ensure personality right protection in an increasingly digitized world.