It's going to get a lot harder to get computerized images of Satchmo, Bogie, Marilyn, the King of Swing, or those Bette Davis Eyes into your next video or film, or even to use their names or images with your print work, and anything associated to promote it, if a bill working its way through the California State Legislature becomes law.
And some critics of the bill fear it could even be extended to satirical reproduction or impersonation of dead celebrities in certain contexts.
The State Senate bill now working its way through the state Assembly would extend from 50 to 70 years prohibitions on using the names, voices, images, signatures, or other likenesses of deceased celebrities - whether or not they actually ever lived in California - without their heirs' or their executors formal grant.
And, if the bill survives and Gov. Gray Davis signs it, it would also require the California Secretary of State to post both the offending work and the "entire registry of persons filing" claims against the image use on the World Wide Web.
The bill explicitly allows damages against anyone who uses the celebrity's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness for advertising or selling goods or services without prior consent.
"Works of expression" including fictional or non-fictional entertainment, dramatic, literary, or musical works, won't be considered goods or services "unless those works use a deceased personality's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness" to promote supporting or souvenir merchandise, in ways that "alter or manipulate" the personality's imprints, or "with reckless disregard for the falsity of the use, where that use is is portrayed as factual."
That sounds on the surface like reasonable protection for the dignity of deceased celebrities, especially involving their uses in commercials such as the Elton John Diet Coke spots a few years back showing a living John performing with, among others, a morphed Louis Armstrong, who died in 1971. But critics say it could be extended arbitrarily to attack satire or "fact-based" works.
In Los Angeles Monday, CBS Radio affiliate KNX blasted the bill in an editorial, calling it a potential lead-in to compromising the First Amendment and sniping at its suggested exemption for things like political or other issue-oriented non-profit campaigns. "What a surprise," the editorial sneered.
