Bollywood stars fight to protect their personality rights amidst the growing surge of deepfakes. Discover how this digital trend is affecti...
Bollywood stars fight to protect their personality rights amidst the growing surge of deepfakes. Discover how this digital trend is affecting celebrities. Some of Bollywood's top stars have been trying to legally safeguard their "personality rights" in the last few weeks. The list has Karan Johar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and her husband, actor Abhishek Bachchan.
Personality rights, often known as publicity rights, are the rights of a person to make money or get anything else from their name or character. This includes their name, picture, voice, mannerisms, or even a slogan or gesture that only they use.
These rights also safeguard a person's identity from being used in a bad way or for profit, and they don't apply to anybody else.
A celebrity can make money by endorsing a product for a charge, but someone else can't exploit their image to market a product without permission.
Judges in India use common law, which is made up of rules that judges make up by applying legal concepts, to determine matters because there is no specific statute that protects personality rights. In some US jurisdictions, like California, where Hollywood is located, publicity rights are guaranteed by law.
In India, these rights are often broken. For example, local companies and stores often utilize pictures of Bollywood stars to promote their products.
Bollywood stars have asked the Delhi High Court to protect their names from being exploited for unauthorized sales, building bogus accounts and websites, and generating filthy AI-generated material, among other things.
The courts have maintained their rights to privacy and told the defendants and linked sites to take down the illegal information.
Celebrities have gone to court on this subject before.
Bollywood star Anil Kapoor sued a number of websites and platforms in 2023 for using his name, picture, voice, and the term "jhakaas" (which means "awesome" in Marathi) for commercial purposes. This phrase became linked with him when he used it in one of his movies.
The Delhi High Court confirmed actor Jackie Shroff's personality rights last year by saying that his name, picture, and even nicknames couldn't be used without his consent.
Nikhil Krishnamurthy, a senior partner at K Law, told the BBC that the first time an Indian celebrity claimed their personality rights was in 2002, when singer Daler Mehndi, who is known for making Bhangra music popular all over the world, went to court over dolls being made in his likeness without his permission.
Krishnamurthy, who was Mehndi's lawyer, remembers that the dolls were quite popular in local marketplaces. Like the artist, they wore bright turbans and robes, and the ones that ran on batteries even sung his hit songs.
Mr. Krishnamurthy says that the Delhi High Court's historic decision to stop their unauthorized production and sale created a precedent for following cases, which have become more common since 2023.
He adds that even though he has won court battles, India still has a long way to go to protect publicity rights, especially compared to the West. Dhruv Anand, a lawyer, explains that because there is no written legislation on personality rights, these kinds of issues are handled under common law, which is based on "judicial precedent."
Vindhya S Mani, a partner at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys, adds that Indian courts also use other codified rules on publicity, such as copyright, trademark, and intellectual property laws, as well as basic rights protected by the Indian constitution, to decide cases.
In Germany, Japan, and the US, personality rights are part of the law. This is not the case in other nations.
In June, Denmark suggested changing its copyright rules so that everyone has the rights to their own face, voice, and body. Mr. Anand explains, "In many states in the US, publicity rights are seen as a separate property right." "Even after a person dies, their family can still use or protect their publicity rights."
In Tennessee, for instance, the right of publicity is seen as a "descendable right." After Elvis Presley died, his estate got the right to manage his name and picture.
In India, however, personality or publicity rights are connected to private rights found in Article 21 of the constitution. Courts say that personality rights die with a person, much as privacy rights.
The Delhi High Court rejected to block the publication of a movie based on the life of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in 2021. The court said that Rajput's right to privacy, publicity, and personality rights could not be passed down to his father.
Fans were stunned by Rajput's death in 2020, and it caused a lot of discussion. There have been a number of videos, movies, and publications since then that guess at the causes behind his demise. Mr. Anand says that making personality rights part of Indian law can help in circumstances like these, since the law might include a language about how heredity works.
He claims that will help make the right clearer, which will make it easier to follow.
Mr. Krishnamurthy adds that the law can also include compensation and damages as a way to stop people from doing bad things.
"Right now, courts can only stop the offending material from being used or spread, but the damage to the celebrity's reputation or money has already been done," Mr. Krishnamurthy argues. "Who's going to pay them back for what they lost?"
Ms. Mani, on the other hand, argues that personality rights not being defined is better because it gives the court more room to interpret the law, which can help the individual who is upset.
But can this view still make sense today, when technology is everywhere and is the biggest danger to our jobs and identities?
In 2024, hundreds of authors in Hollywood went on strike to protest generative AI stealing their jobs. That same year, actress Scarlett Johansson said that Open AI utilized her voice for their AI model GPT-4o, which the firm rejected.
Could tighter rules keep technology from using someone's identity without their permission?
No matter how precisely they are written down, Ms. Mani thinks that legislation will always remain one step behind technology.
She argues, "What matters more is that people can easily read the laws, given how complicated society is today."
She goes on to say, "Also, knowing your rights and wanting to enforce them is important to getting the most out of the protections built into the current legal system, especially the constitution."