Abstract
American privacy law is surprisingly weak. If privacy law were a stock, its performance over the last century would not be deemed impressive. It has been a consistently poor achiever, barely keeping up with inflation. I speak here of privacy law in the tort sense, and the four torts that are classically understood to comprise invasion of privacy: 1) false light; 2) publication of private facts; 3) intrusion; and 4) appropriation. Of these four torts, only appropriation (or "the right of publicity") has been a ripping success for plaintiffs, a genuine high-return stock, and a species of intellectual property, even though appropriation is arguably not a true form of invasion of privacy at all. ...
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2002
Recommended Citation
Rodney A. Smolla, Accounting for the Slow Growth of American Privacy Law, 27 Nova L. Rev. 289 (2002).
