Invasion of Privacy Law

Invasion of privacy is the intrusion into the personal life of another, without just cause, which can give the person whose privacy has been invaded a right to bring a lawsuit for damages against the person or entity that intruded. It encompasses workplace monitoring, Internet privacy, data collection, and other means of disseminating private information.

Celebrities are not protected in most situations, since they have voluntarily placed themselves already within the public eye, and their activities are considered newsworthy. However, an otherwise non-public individual has a right to privacy from: a) intrusion on one's solitude or into one's private affairs; b) public disclosure of embarrassing private information; c) publicity which puts him/her in a false light to the public; d) appropriation of one's name or picture for personal or commercial advantage.

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>>> Invasion of Privacy Law & Legal Definition


Invasion of Privacy: False light

False light invasion of privacy occurs when information is published about a person that is false or places the person in a false light, is highly offensive to a reasonable person, and is published with knowledge or in reckless disregard of whether the information was false or would place the person in a false light.

Although this tort is similar to defamation, it is not the same. The report need not be defamatory to be actionable as false light. This type of invasion of privacy tends to occur when a writer condenses or fictionalizes a story, or uses stock footage to illustrate a news story.

False light includes embellishment (false material added to a story, which places someone in a false light), distortion (the arrangement of materials or photographs to give a false impression) and fictionalization (works of fiction containing disguised characters that represent real people or references to real people in fictitious articles). Some courts may consider works of fiction to be constitutionally protected expressions even if they contain characters who resemble, or clearly were based on, identifiable individuals known by the author or creator.(*)

Notes

* See, e.g., Polydoros v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 965 P.2d 724 (Cal. 1998), aff'g 67 Cal. App. 4th 318 (Cal. Ct. App. 1997).


Defamation vs. False Light Lawsuits

There is a common misunderstanding between Libel and Defamation. Libel is the publication of a false, defamatory, statement fact, while defamation is the publication of anything (true or false) that injures any person or business entity:

Defamation is generally defined as a statement impeaching the honesty, integrity or reputation of an individual and thereby exposing the individual to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, to cause him or her to be shunned or avoided or to injure the individual in his or her office, business or occupation.

Could you get sued for publishing an insult that results in others ridiculing someone, even if there was no concrete damage to the defamed person?

The DMCA was designed to protect web hosting services and ISP's and not web authors. In this article, a retired judge Fadeley notes that offering DMCA protection to bloggers and web authors is a serious loophole in the DMCA, and that new legislation is required to make bloggers and "cyber bullies" responsible for damage to people.

"The law has yet to create reasonable standards for the Internet and allows anyone to quote any source, with almost no liability for what they say.

The impact on innocent parties can be severe -- some companies have lost millions in stock value from an irate individual speaking anonymously as an expert on a blog soapbox, making statements intended to be read as fact."

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>>> Internet web false light invasion of privacy and defamation Libel laws



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