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ARTICLE · 06 DECEMBER 2017

In The Future, Everyone Will Have Their Personality Misappropriated For 15 Minutes

McCarthy Tétrault
McCarthy Tétrault
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McCarthy Tétrault

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At the same time Andy Warhol was predicting the intense, short-lived "15 minutes of fame" that has now manifest as viral videos, legal scholars were pondering the implications of technology on our private lives.

CanadaPrivacy
CyberLex Blog
CyberLex Blog
Jade Buchanan
Jade Buchanan
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At the same time Andy Warhol was predicting the intense, short-lived "15 minutes of fame" that has now manifest as viral videos, legal scholars were pondering the implications of technology on our private lives.1 While nobody got as close as predicting that a social media website would get sued for using photos people voluntarily uploaded to promote products, legal remedies for "appropriation, for the defendant's advantage, of the plaintiff's name or likeness" were already emerging in the 1960s.

So what is the law in Canada now? Can you sell "Damn Daniel" fidget spinners? Or use Chewbacca Mom to promote your crowd-funded hover boards? What if the person's "fame" is their 407 Twitter followers? The answer is usually going to be "not without their consent", but the reason why is a little less clear.

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