Media opposes right-of-publicity bill: ‘an attack on the First Amendment’

The hasty effort in New York to pass a right-of-publicity bill ended—for now—recently after the state assembly sponsor pulled his bill and the senate appeared unwilling to advance its own version until the assembly acted. Media organizations had opposed the legislation: The National Press Photographers Association said the assembly bill would “unconstitutionally deprive” its members “of the right to exercise property and copyright interests in their still, filmed, and recorded images.” And a broad coalition—including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Media Law Resource Center, and the New York News Publishers Association—ran a full-page ad in the Albany Times-Union calling the bills “an attack on the First Amendment.”

But what’s the right of publicity, anyway? And why were media organizations so concerned about the bills? Those two questions are worth answering: Many states have some kind of publicity-related law on the books, and it’s likely that another New York bill will be introduced in the fall.