New yORK Lawsuit

[Samuel V]

Would "allowing the reproduction of his image without his consent"
really be "state interference?"  Government inaction in failing to
protect someone's alleged private rights is pretty consistently deemed
not to be state action, isn't it?  That is, absent some equal
protection violation.

The claim of a "right" not to have his picture published seems to me
analogous to a "right" of Muslims not to be offended by publication of
pictures of Mohamed.

Sam Ventola
Denver, Colorado

On 2/10/06, Marc Stern <mstern at ajcongress.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Today's NY Law journal reports on Nussenzweig v. di Corcia in which a
> Hassidic Jew with religious objections to be photographed sued a
> photographer who took a surreptitious picture of the plaintiff and sold 10
> prints for between 20-30000 dollars. New York law permits artists to use
> other persons images for artistic, but not for commercial, purposes. The
> narrow question was whether the sale of a few copies of the picture for
> substantial sums artistic or commercial. In the course of holding it was the
> former, the court (according to the law journal) noted that New York law
> favors freedom of artistic expression. For some reason, the court thought it
> irrelevant to observe that the protection of those first amendment rights
> came at the expense of other first amendment rights that of the plaintiff to
> freely practice his faith without state interference, here in the form of
> allowing the reproduction of his image without his consent.
>
> Marc Stern
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