Alabama Court Decides Publicity Rights Trump First Amendment In S-Town Lawsuit
from the not-how-it-works dept
We've written for some time about the scourge that is publicity rights laws and the fairly blatant way in which they tend to butt up against the First Amendment. While famous folk certainly do have the right to reserve the use of their likeness and names from those that would use either for commercial purposes, too often these laws are instead used to silence non-commercial speech, or speech that revolves instead around journalistic efforts. A famous person, for instance, cannot use publicity rights laws to keep a newspaper from printing factual information about them, or a movie maker from producing a documentary about them. This is First Amendment 101.
But it seems some in the legal field skipped that class. One judge in Alabama has decided to shoulder the First Amendment to one side and favor instead the state's publicity rights laws to allow a lawsuit against the producers of famed podcast S-Town to move forward.
Serial Productions, This American Life Public Benefit Corporation and journalist Brian Reed must face a lawsuit for allegedly violating a dead man's likeness in S-Town, the controversial but acclaimed podcast that has been downloaded more than 80 million times. An Alabama judge's rejection of a dismissal motion on Friday is almost certain to prompt concern among media lawyers.
At issue is John McLemore, the man who had originally emailed This American Life about a supposed murder in his hometown. While nothing came of that claim itself, McLemore eventually committed suicide. That suicide was the impetus for S-Town, with the podcast diving deep into McLemore's life and death.
In other words, S-Town became a docuseries of sorts about McLemore. Now the estate is suing under Alabama's onerous publicity rights laws. Serial Productions, producers of S-Town, sought a dismissal on First Amendment grounds, because of course it did.
"Because S-Town is both a public interest and an artistic work, the Estate’s claims must fail," stated Serial Productions and other defendants in a motion to dismiss. "First and foremost, the imposition of liability under the Act in connection with S-Town would violate the First Amendment free speech rights of the Defendants. Imposition of liability also would violate the Act itself. ... S-Town, a 2017 Peabody award winning podcast, is specifically exempted under the Act as a public interest documentary work. It is also specifically exempted as an expressive and artistic work. The creation and distribution of S-Town is exactly the type of constitutionally-protected speech the Alabama legislature took great pains to exclude from liability under the Act."
The judge, however, has allowed the case to move forward. Without spending any real time taking on the First Amendment claims generally, the judge instead points back to the publicity rights law in Alabama and suggests that because S-Town has advertisements within it, it therefore qualifies as a commercial use of McLemore's identity. This defies all kinds of previous caselaw indicating that advertisements don't suddenly make expressive speech commercial speech. And, frankly, such a view would seem to undermine all kinds of media enterprises that advertise as part of their business model, from newspapers to news on television.
"Taking these allegations as true, the Court cannot conclusively determine that Defendants' use of McLemore's indicia of identity is non-actionable as the contents of any and all the alleged advertisements or promotions allegedly using McLemore’s indicia of identity are not before this Court. Although Cargile refers to the S-Town podcast generally in his counts, the Court assumes that Plaintiff’s general reference to the podcast includes both S-Town’s expressive contents and the advertisements that interject at regular intervals throughout each episode as well as any other advertisements or promotion materials related to S- Town. Therefore, Cargile has stated a plausible claim for relief under the Act, and Defendants’ motion to dismiss is due to be denied."
Now, this is just a ruling on a motion to dismiss, but it's bad nonetheless. Imagine a world where the famous could bar journalistic outlets from reporting or doing documentaries on them if those same outlets sell advertising? Is that a better or worse place than a world properly governed by the First Amendment and protected speech?
One hopes the legal team for Serial Productions can educate the court through the trial phase as to why it's speech is protected. Otherwise, the journalism and documentary industries are in for a world of trouble.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 1st amendment, alabama, brian reed, free speech, john mclemore, journalism, publicity rights, s-town, this american life
Companies: serial productions, this american life
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The headline confused me for a while before I remembered that 'trump' was a verb before it was the POTUS's last name.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Here's the real problem with Donald Trump.
I had to read that headline like three times before it made sense - oh, trump, not Trump.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
From the “this website sucks” department.
Just close this shit already. Nobody gives a shit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
We'd have avoided this problem if they weren't capitalizing words for no good reason.
Then there's the problem that the headline's not true. The court didn't decide that publicity rights trump the First Amendment; they simply weren't convinced about the opposite.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Apparently you gave enough of a shit to post.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Then why do you keep coming back?
You know what? I've seen hundreds of thousands of websites that posted content no one gave a shit about. And you know what I did? Clicked onto the next thing I was interested in and never came back and never gave them another thought.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Because what's more pathetic - the pathetic website or the guy who has so little going on he has to fill his time with coming around telling the website its pathetic?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
By allowing the lawsuit to move forward, the court made a clear decision on whether publicity rights are more important than the First Amendment — and that decision was “yes, they are”.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
The guy who has so much time on his hands that he thinks trolling a tech blog is the height of hilarity and amusement.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
The First Amendment provides that all speech is protected by default.
Everything that is not protected speech is an exemption carved out of the First Amendment. These exemptions are made because allowing that particular type of speech would violate other human rights, and be more detrimental to society than forbidding it.
These exemptions are often reasonable and important. Exemptions such as HIPPA, which state your doctor can't choose to sell anyone your medical history. Or libel and slander, which state that you can't tell lies about someone and get them in trouble. Or copyright and patents, which state that nobody can take a copy of that book you just wrote or gadget you just invented, make a million more copies without your permission, and get rich off of it. Or classified secrets, which state that you can't just tell everyone your employer's Twitter password or secret soda formula.
In short, allowing a form of speech to be punished means that the speech has violated a right which is more important than the right to speak freely.
In this case, the right allegedly being violated by the speech is the right to sell your soul likeness under Alabama publicity law, solely because of advertisements interjected throughout a factually-inspired work.
By allowing the case to continue, the Judge is stating that the plaintiffs' right to profit off of the name and appearance of a relative who killed themselves is more important than the right of the defendants to speak freely about the life of a man who committed suicide.
In some cases this might be reasonable; if I wrote a movie about one of my friends (or even better, one of my enemies) and sold it to Hollywood without an agreement with this frenemy, they'd have a good argument that I was unfairly profiting off of their likeness: I get paid because I'm selling their image. (Harder if they're a public figure.) If I made a commercial featuring papparazi footage of a celebrity enjoying my product and used that to promote my product, the celebrity would have a good argument that I was unfairly profiting off of their likeness: I get paid because I'm selling their image. (Harder if they're not a public figure.)
But if talking about someone for 22 minutes and selling the other 8 minutes to the highest bidder was violating that someone's right to sell their image, it would be illegal for news stations to play commercials. Clearly, that's not the case.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Whether or not it's a good reason is debatable, but capitalizing every word in a headline is pretty standard style.
Many style guides (including APA, Chicago, MLA, and AP) wouldn't have used a capital letter on "in", but would otherwise be identical to the headline here, including capitalizing "Trump".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: trump Trump
Do Trumpets trump Trump? And if so, do the headlines trumpet 'Trumpets trump Trump', or 'Trumpets TRUMP Trump'? And if the trumpeting headlines were banned, would that be 'Trumpets trump Trump trumped' or 'Trumped trumpets trump Trump'?
Actually those wouldn't be allowed either because they have the same cadence as driving over the Tallahatchie bridge with a stone in your tire, and someone has already copyrighted that sound.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Titles, headlines, and their similar relations are almost always capitalized. Welcome to Earth.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
Right. They're doing it only to match a style, which is to say there's no good reason.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That is still a standard thing to do, and it not unusual. Saying that isn't a good reason implies you jut don't like the standard style of usage. Titles you capitalize the first letter.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
English
Hi, I'm your host Droue Kheirea and welcome to another episode of Who's Language Is It Anyway, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Although, to quibble ever so slightly, capitalizing "in" is not journalistic standard. The Chicago Style, Associated Press standard, and the scholarly APA and MLA standards would all show the title as, "Alabama Court Decides Publicity Rights Trump First Amendment in S-Town Lawsuit".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: trump Trump
Ah, but I'm afraid I must play my trump card on your trumped-up trumpeting about how Trump's trumpets must be truncated by a troublesome tramp presumptiously thumping chumps in the rump with a grumpy summons to the umpires of law.
Such a bumptious assumption would dump the frumpy bumpkin in a untriumphant, harrumphing lump, as it is trademarks that trample the truant troubadours in crumpled jumpsuits who trumpet their transpiciously transgressing transmissions. Our rump-thumping tramp will only trouble troops to jump on his traumatized trumpet-trumping transcribers if they transport a triplicate of his tremolo through the troposphere without transformation, instead of transcribing a transfiguring treatment of that troubling rumpus.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Your tears taste delicious. 😉
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Isn't it settled law that even a show that covers an individual does not violate their right to publicity if the show has sponsors?
It WAS settled law, once upon a time. Why is this case difference?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes, we've always done it that way, no reason to change now .....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: trump Trump
Just think ... we would not be able to make these puns and jokes if it were not for Donald changing his name from Drumpf as that would not work as well.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Imagine
"Imagine a world where the famous could bar journalistic outlets from reporting or doing documentaries on them if those same outlets sell advertising?"
Journalistic outlets that couldn't rely on advertisers for revenue, I mean - no ads? News organizations that might stop reporting on the famous?
Oh, wait First Amendment...damn! That was close.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Excellent clapback
[ link to this | view in thread ]