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