Fred Bauder wrote:
If you take a short movie of him [Paul Newman] and enter it at Sundance maybe there is a legal problem or maybe not.
As long as you didn't do anything illegal to take the movie, there would be no legal problem with this. Celebrities do have a "right of publicity", which means that their likeness can not be used to sell products, which seems fair enough. But this right does not extend very far -- and is often trumped by 1st Amendment rights.
For example, Time magazine might buy a photo of Britney Spears getting into a limo. The photo could be taken by any random passerby on the street. Then they use that photo, on the cover of the magazine, to sell more magazines. This might seem like a violation of Ms. Spears right of publicity, but it is not.
Of course that is why celebrities avoid the public and tend to go to certain places where that sort of situation is customarily avoided such as Aspen.
*nod* As I understand it, there's an unwritten and sometimes breached code of conduct. The celebs make enough public appearances in controlled settings (movie premieres, posh nightclubs, awards ceremonies, etc.) to keep the tabloids supplied with sufficient shots, and in exchange, the tabloids don't send people to harass them outside their homes and so forth. Problems arise when there is a huge demand for photos, and the celeb doesn't make the customary public appearances, or when there is a "special event".
But none of those types of arrangements have any legal standing, they are just customs. There's a symbiotic relationship between the tabloids and the celebrities. Celebrities need to be on the cover of the magazines. The tabloids need to have pictures of the celebrities.
Even so, there's pretty much no legal restriction on using photos in any sort of journalistic rather than strictly commercial/advertising fashion. No permission is needed.
--Jimbo