ABSTRACT
Our society frequently describes privacy problems with the dystopian metaphor of George Orwell’s 1984. Understood through the Orwellian metaphor – and particularly the ‘Big Brother is watching you’ maxim – privacy rights are forcefully invaded by the government’s constant surveillance and disclosures of personal information. Yet, privacy’s coined opposite, the right of publicity – ‘the right of every human being to control the commercial use of his or her identity’ – still lacks an appropriate metaphor, making it difficult to conceptualize and thus to regulate effectively.
This Article suggests that the problems with a commercially transferable right of publicity can be usefully analogized to another chilling dystopia, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley wrote Brave New World as an expression of the anxiety of losing one’s individual identity in a technology-driven future. In the novel, Huxley envisioned a utilitarian society controlled through technological manipulation, conspicuous consumption, social conditioning, and entertainment addiction. In contrast to Big Brother’s forceful coercion, pacified citizens in the ‘World State’ society willingly participate in their own servitude ….
Marlan, Dustin, The Dystopian Right of Publicity (November 9, 2021). Berkeley Technology Law Journal, volume 37, no 2, 2022.
First posted 2021-11-22 18:00:26
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