Privacy Law in Usa - What Is Privacy? What Makes Our Lives Private?

Privacy: Chapters 7 & 8

What is privacy? What makes our lives private? Privacy is a law today that has not been

known for very long. The idea of privacy that everyone has running through their minds is just to

be left alone. In reality what constitutes the crossing of the privacy line. It wasn't until 1890

when two men wrote in the Harvard Law Review about the "The Right to Privacy.? The two

men were Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, the two were young lawyers who had the

sense to right papers on what they thought were Americans rights to privacy. After their ideas

were published they attempted to pass their knowledge on to the court systems asking to make

laws that would follow their papers. Most court systems did not accept there law until 13 years

later when the state of New York passed the first privacy law. The law prohibited the commercial

exploitation of an individual (Pember 240).

The privacy law that the state of New York adapted well and began spreading to many

states but not vert fast, it took roughly 90 years to get the law spread. Mainly because the most

of the courts used the Bill of Rights as a persons?privacy protection. To this day there are states

that still do not have individual privacy rights. As our government more clearly defines our

privacy rights then more states will join in on adopting the rights to their laws. Within the past

couple years the government has developed for different torts that would accuse somebody in

invasion of privacy. The torts are listed as following:

1. Appropriation of name or likeness for trade purposes (Pember 241)

2. Intrusion upon an individual's solitude (Pember 241)

3. Publication of private information about an individual (Pember 241)

4. Publishing material that puts an individual in a false light (Pember 241)

From the time that these torts were declared as the rights to privacy the law became much more

complicated than before.

The first form of invasion of privacy is appropriation and the book defines it as taking a

person's name, picture, photograph, or likeness and using it for a commercial gain without

permission (Pember 241). In laymen terms a person cannot impersonate another without the

permission of the person being impersonated. This tort is the biggest of the four when it comes

invasion of privacy. Of all the torts, appropriation is the oldest and the most comprehensible until

more has been added on. An obvious case to relate how the basic form of appropriation works it

Haelan Laboratories, Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum , this was a fight between to trading card

companies; one wanted to sell cards with chewing gum and so did the other, but Haelan did not

have the permission of the players to be on the cards. Haelan was denied the chance to sell his

cards. Appropriation not only covers the right to privacy but also the right to publicity which

walks hand and hand with the first right. In the right of publicity a person who plays a character

on television also has the rights to their characters that they play. For instance in the McFarland

v. Miller a restaurant owner [Miller] had opened a place called "Spanky McFarland's.? The

problem that lied was the George McFarland played "Spanky?on a show called "Little Rascals?

and his claim was the Miller was exploiting his character for business. In the first ruling Miller

won but after that no luck because both Court of Appeals ruled in McFarland's favor,