Somewhere out there, there is an old photograph of a very young child standing completely naked, showing the marked signs of a most unusual medical condition.

I met that child when she was well into her old age, one winter afternoon over a decade ago.

Mariana (not her real name) had just returned from the cemetery where her husband is buried. Dressed all in black, her hands clutching a small-change purse wrapped in a clear plastic bag, she regarded me warily when she saw me waiting by her front door.

‘I am not Mariana’, she protested when I greeted her by name. ‘I am her sister. What do you want from her?’

But I knew she was Mariana. There were dark circles under her droopy eyes, just as in the photo that had accompanied the news of her medical case several decades earlier. Her hands trembled as she tried to unlock the door to her crumbling plastic-roofed shack.

I explained that I had just finished reading a recent book about ‘her sister’ and that I only wished to speak to her about conflicting information contained in that publication, as I was conducting research about her medical condition.

Mariana listened in perfect silence, eyeing me suspiciously. Upon hearing the name of the author of the book, her nervousness turned to fury.

‘God knows whether that man is even a doctor! Are you a friend of his? Did he send you here? Why on earth should I give a damn about your research?’ she shouted, veins throbbing at her temples. ‘I am?not?a guinea pig!’

Mariana’s reaction startled me.?Unknowingly, I had opened old wounds, and I felt profound guilt for making them fresh again. My unexpected visit, as it turned out, was just another one of those harassing knocks at the door that she had endured throughout her life.

‘I recognize you!’ she snapped, jabbing a finger at my face. ‘You have been following me’.

I tried reassuring her that this was not the case, but Mariana struggled to take my word for it.?Her privacy has been repeatedly invaded by complete strangers since childhood. Treating her as an object of their curiosity, her emotional wellbeing has been collateral damage. She now finds it difficult to trust anyone.

‘Please forget me,’ she then said, her voice cracking. ‘I just want to be left alone’.

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS

Mariana’s photograph was originally taken without her consent in the course of a medical examination, years before the internet existed. Soon after, it was published in a French medical journal, along with her full name and medical details. Her story then appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. Decades later, when it was posted online, the photograph quickly went viral, taking on a life of its own. It has now been viewed millions of times, making it impossible for her to be left in peace.

Throughout her life, perfect strangers have invaded her privacy without regard for her emotional wellbeing

Unquestionably, the circulation of such sensitive material violates Mariana’s privacy, dignity and family-life interests as guaranteed by national laws and international human rights treaties. Less clear, though, is the practical question of how one goes about stopping the infringement of these rights. What can be done to stop the circulation of harmful (and non-consensual) content of this nature? Where does one even begin?

Haunted by Mariana’s lifetime of distress, and in search of answers, I landed at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

As journalist-in-residence there, I worked from 2017 to 2019 with a team of 20 law students and 18 law professors, alongside lawyers from several countries, on a project entitled ‘A Child’s Right to be Forgotten’. Our objective was to analyse Mariana’s case and find a potential solution to this extraordinary situation.

After a careful examination of multiple areas of law and a plethora of expert opinion – from legal academics, jurists, ethicists, medical professionals, trauma psychologists and scientists – we pursued several lines of approach.

COMPLICATED MATTERS

First, we considered copyright law to try to stop the circulation of the photograph. Given that it had been first published in France, UK legislation presented an opportunity to undertake corrective measures. Through the Berne Convention, the UK and France recognize each other’s copyright regimes. In France, the copyright was technically still valid – provided it could be established that the photograph was an intellectual creation under French law. If Mariana’s picture was being published online without the authorization of its owner, a request could be made to the rights holder, we reasoned, to revoke any use not bound by contract.

But we ran into difficulties locating the owner of the copyright as the image had no credit line. We tried contacting the medical journal in France, only to discover that it had since been acquired by another publisher, Elsevier Masson.

We reached out to Elsevier, but, surprisingly, they did not know whether or not they owned the copyright.

In a baffling email response, an employee from the company’s copyright unit wrote: ‘[W]e are unable to confirm that we are the legal copyright holders of the figure… and that we are entitled to deliver permissions to third parties. Therefore, although Elsevier Masson has no objection for you to use the aforementioned material subject to suitable acknowledgement to the source, it is important that you obtain, prior to use, written permission from the author(s) (or heirs) of the figure…’.

The only possibility of finding out who held copyright for the photograph was to ask the publisher if they had kept a copy of the contractual agreement with the photographer. But that turned out to be a dead end.

FURTHER INTO THE MAZE

Next on our list was image rights legislation. The island of Guernsey has legislation for the protection of a person’s image rights. This is a somewhat niche course, used mostly by celebrities, enabling them to register their image rights there and bring legal action against breaches. It sounded promising, but only Mariana, or someone acting on her behalf with her consent, could assert those rights. Seeing how Mariana avoided all contact with outsiders, and determined to prevent exacerbating her trauma by raking it all up again, we couldn’t pursue this route further.

We then looked into data protection and the right to be forgotten as a new line of inquiry. As it is in the EU, personal data is protected in Mariana’s country. Given that Mariana has not consented to the use of her personal information on the internet, a request can be made to those?processing?her information to remove it. This can be accomplished pursuant to her country’s Data Protection Act.

Better still, a request can be made directly to search engines (as opposed to individual websites) to remove search results containing infringing content. While this course of action normally would require Mariana’s direct intervention, there is a legal provision that makes it possible for a third party to lodge a formal complaint of infringement with the National Authority for the Protection of Data in that country. Mariana’s consent was not required for this action.

Encouraged by this new window of opportunity, we prepared to make our move. But soon other complexities arose. The complaint to the regulatory agency had to be filed in person, which we did – even though this required a long-distance trip. After securing the assistance of lawyers with relevant experience in Mariana’s country, we proceeded with a complaint against Google for infringing on her rights. But then, bureaucracy took on a Kafkaesque turn.

Our case was deemed inadmissible. Why? It turned out that Mariana’s consent was required after all for any action initiated to remove the very material that had been originally made public without her consent. But had Google obtained Mariana’s consent before making her personal data public online? Of course not. Could the regulatory agency make that inquiry? They failed to address this question. Two appeals later, our case was closed.

We then resorted to a non-legal approach. Bearing in mind that there is public interest in this matter, as well as a legal and moral obligation to put an end to decades of harm, we brought the case to the attention of five United Nations special rapporteurs seeking their intervention. Unfortunately, that avenue produced no fruitful outcome either.

A letter was then sent to Elsevier briefing them on the serious privacy impacts of the use of Mariana’s name and image in their publications. Would they consider removing them? Or at least blurring her face when using that image and anonymizing her details? It went unanswered.

No matter what we tried, we came up against hurdles.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

At the end of the day, this work is not just about Mariana. Her story is part of a much bigger picture.?It is the story of countless vulnerable people being harmed by the online circulation of intrusive content, while internet intermediaries profit from such material.

According to trauma psychologists, Mariana will likely never be able to develop trust in others. The consequences of her childhood trauma and public exposure are profound, dramatic and long-lasting. And that is to say nothing of the strangers interested in her story, whose curiosity makes her relive her trauma again and again.

Countless vulnerable people are being harmed by the online circulation of intrusive content, while internet intermediaries profit

The literature on image-based abuse suggests that the re-posting of such images is, in and of itself, a form of abuse. The online availability of the images causes great damage to survivors.

Taking into account Mariana’s lack of agency, it is unreasonable to expect her, or someone in a similar situation, to stand up to tech giants and fight for her right to privacy. Given that online material can be shared globally, it is challenging to identify the jurisdiction in which infringements take place.

Even when there is agency, case law shows that filing a take-down request against search engines and social media platforms is onerous. While they boast about their global reach and presence, they can be quick to argue that they are based in the state of California and are not bound by laws outside that jurisdiction.

Mariana’s story is a cautionary tale of the consequences of failing to remove harmful content from search engines and the internet. Privacy matters. To protect it, regulation is essential. But legislation also needs strengthening to be sensitive to the trauma of those suffering from the unwanted online distribution of harmful personal data.

Remember that behind a photo there is a real person; it’s not just an image waiting for a click of your mouse.

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Maria Prymachenko, (1982)

Claire Wortsman is an IPilogue Senior Editor and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

On February 25, invading Russian forces the Ivankiv Historical and Local Museum, and the many culturally and historically significant pieces it housed, to the ground. The Museum’s collection included 25 paintings by Maria Prymachenko, the celebrated Ukrainian artist world-famous for her colourful folk art style. Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter that a local man ran into the burning building and was able to save some of the precious works. Yet many more pieces were lost, and millions of artworks and monuments at risk from Russia’s military onslaught. These those dating back to the Byzantine and Baroque periods, as well as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Ukrainian Minister of Culture Olexandr Tkachenko has that Russia lose its UNESCO membership. The destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage at the hands of Russia is not a novel occurrence -? the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the conflicts in Donetsk and Luhansk to the loss of dozens of archaeological, historical, and artistic collections. James Cuno, President of the J. Paul Getty Trust, released a condemning the cultural atrocities taking place in Ukraine alongside the unfathomable human and environmental losses. Cuno identifies that cultural heritage has the power to unite us, and is critical for achieving peace, making it a common target in war; a means of destroying a society by erasing its memory. Officials preserving and protecting cultural legacies in times of conflict has the power to bind local people and foster peace, once the shooting stops.

The importance of safeguarding cultural property extends beyond the borders of Ukraine. The preamble of the recognizes that “… any damage to cultural property, irrespective of the people it belongs to, is a damage to the cultural property of all humanity, because every people contributes to the world’s culture.” Putin’s continued violation of international law is a blow to the international legal order – one that Yale Law School’s Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro must be met with an aggressive and resolute response.

Uncertainty and crisis in Ukraine have left many fleeing their homes, while museum employees remain behind to look out for their collections in whatever way they can – whether by standing guard, hiding art in basements, or (for those farther away from the war zones) transforming into a place of temporary respite for those who have fled. Fedir Androshchuk, the director of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, is standing alongside two colleagues in an to safeguard the museum from attack or looting. He that “the museum is located in the middle of a rich cultural heritage area near three fine churches, but also close to some possible targets (the Ukrainian security service and border forces).” This proximity to potential military targets is significant from an international law perspective, [1], as the carves a “military necessity” exception out of its protections for cultural property. As by Captain Joshua E. Kastenberg, “Where a defender state harbors items of military value… in or near cultural property, the property loses its legal protections.”[2]

Androshchuk also , “there is no guarantee that the Ukrainian cultural heritage will not be plundered and transferred to Russian museums, especially given that Kyiv has a special place in Putin’s interpretation of Russian history and its roots.” The destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage serves the narrative of Vladimir Putin, who that Ukraine is a nation and that Ukrainians are a people. Perpetrators of the intentional destruction of cultural heritage seek to destroy the communities for which the heritage is perceived as an essential element of their own life, cultural identity, and distinctiveness.[3] Yet Putin’s assault has backfired – Ukraine itself, the West against Russia, and images of Prymachenko’s uniquely Ukrainian style around the world.

[1] Captain Joshua E. Kastenberg, “The Legal Regime for Protecting Cultural Property During Armed Conflict,” Air Force Law Review 42 A.F.L Rev. (1997)

[2] Ibid

[3] Federico Lenzerini, “Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage,” The Oxford Handbook of International Cultural Heritage Law (2020)

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However, also in Spain, scores of people are fighting against the erasure of their country’s hideous past. They are seeking the right to “remember” the truths about the Franco-era crimes.?Stories about some of the victims of those crimes are featured in the award-winning documentary The Silence of Others, which was screened in Toronto at the 2018 Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival.

The Silence of Others chronicles the story of the victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Francisco Franco and their ongoing quest for justice. Filmed over seven years, their story is brought to life through magnificent cinematography and masterful storytelling. In the process, directors Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar amassed 450 hours of footage filled with voices of despair and hope.

“How unjust life is… Not life. We humans… we are unjust,” reflects an 80-something-year old woman by the name of as she sits by the roadside where her murdered mother’s nude body was ditched by Franco’s local militia eight decades ago. Ascención Mendieta, on the day of her 90^th birthday, flies from Madrid to Buenos Aires in her tireless mission to have her father’s remains unearthed from a mass grave. Also in Madrid, José María “Chato” Galante lives a stone’s throw away from his former torturer. What’s more, tens of thousands of women today are still searching for children stolen at birth, decades after Franco’s death.

The Silence of Others is not only a history lesson on the Franco era, it is also a lesson on the principle of universal jurisdiction in international law. Spanish courts have made use of universal jurisdiction to prosecute cases of crimes against humanity committed in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and El Salvador. ?Eighty years on, however, Spain is reluctant to reckon with its fascist past. Franco died in 1975. Two years after his death, Spain passed an amnesty law, known as the “pact of forgetting,” that pardoned the crimes of the Franco regime. Today, victims and relatives of Franco’s crimes are seeking to annul the controversial amnesty law and to prosecute Franco’s surviving lackeys in Argentinian courts.

The Silence of Others won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival. At the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, Carracedo and Bahar received standing ovations at their film’s screenings, where Osgoode Hall Law School's journalist in residence, caught up with them to ask a few questions.

How was The Silence of Others born?

Almudena Carracedo (AC): Firstly, on a personal level, this is a story that my generation in Spain had somehow left buried in the past. That bothered me a great deal and eventually I felt the time had come to confront it. Secondly, when the story of Spain’s “stolen children” began to come out in 2010, and it became clear that the story of those crimes had been occurring throughout the Franco era, we began to follow stories of mass arrests, torture, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

Robert Bahar (RB): I’ll just add an international perspective. In the United States, we study a little about the Spanish Civil War. We learn about Guernica and Hemingway, but we really don’t know much about the dictatorship that took place forty years afterwards. And we certainly did not learn anything about the amnesty law and the decision to forget.

So, this kind of situation immediately made us think of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and truth and reconciliation processes in other countries emerging from repressive regimes. So, we wondered: how could it be that Spain had had no Nuremberg Trials, no Truth and Reconciliation Commission; that there had been no consideration for justice and reparation for the victims; that no one had considered what should happen to perpetrators; and, above all, how do we guarantee that these things will not be repeated? And so, if you have that frame and the fact that there had been no attempt to deal with the situation in Spain and that there were victims whose stories were unfolding in the film, there was a very powerful desire to tell that story. So, we began filming the process of the “Argentine lawsuit.”

Spain was instrumental in enabling the prosecution of cases of crimes against humanity in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere. Demands for justice for the victims of Franco’s crimes are being denied on the basis that there is a statute of limitations on those crimes. This appears to be a contradiction. How has the Spanish public reacted to this contradiction, which is very clearly illustrated in your film?

AC: Unfortunately, there is a tendency to judge other countries for their crimes – particularly countries of the global south – and to overlook crimes committed within your own territory… In Spain, people were absolutely scandalized about the case involving Argentina’s 500 stolen children, but in Spain we are talking about, at a very minimum, 30,000 cases which were registered up until 1952. Now, just imagine the number of cases registered from 1952 up to the 1980s!

Therefore, one of our goals in making this film is to let Spanish society find out what happened in their own country… What do we do about all this now, in 2018? What do we do about the tens of thousands of people who don’t know who their parents are or that they had even been stolen? What do we do about the more than 100,000 people that were secretly buried in mass graves? What do we do about the people who were victims of torture? And what do we do about their torturers who freely walk the streets?? We sincerely believe that people in Spain are democratically mature enough to face all this.

Many people argue it is time to turn the page and leave the past behind. So, why tell that story now?

AC: People who argue that it is time to turn the page and that one ought not reopen old wounds don’t suffer from those wounds to begin with. Let’s be clear, the surviving victims of Franco’s crimes are still suffering from those wounds as they were never afforded the chance to heal from them in the first place.

RB: In addition, the social movement that was growing and led to this movement -- which we were fortunate enough to document -- also reflects that this is the moment in which these questions can be addressed. Today, I think that young people in Spain are ready to reckon with its bloody, divided past… Many of them feel that they had been robbed of their own history.

There is also a sense of urgency. If you look at the ages of the victims and of perpetrators you realize that you probably have between five and twenty years to deal with this situation.

This is a story that will resonate in Spain and around the world… We have received requests to screen our film in Colombia, Algeria, Lebanon, the Balkans and Sri Lanka where there are transitional post-conflict kind of processes taking place. In many ways, the film tackles important questions about the search for truth, justice, reparation, non-repetition, and it offers a model of how a small group of victims can sit at a kitchen table – in this case, at the home of counsel Carlos Slepoy – to organize and use universal jurisdiction when their own government won’t pursue crimes committed in their own countries.

While the film’s protagonists appear to be fighting for the “right to remember,” there are many people in Spain who are currently fighting for the “right to be forgotten.” Indeed, the landmark “right to be forgotten” case originated in Spain. How does this story fit in with the so-called “right to be forgotten”? ???????

José María “Chato” Galante: There is absolutely no connection. As far as the “right to be forgotten” is concerned, the Spanish lawyer with unpaid debts appeared before the courts and went through the legal channels where he eventually received his sentence, etc. In our case, we are seeking access to justice. We are asking that our cases for crimes against humanity be heard in a democratic court; that our perpetrators be brought to justice to be tried and legally prosecuted; and, if found guilty, that they be convicted for those crimes.

After forty years of being denied access to justice, we are essentially being asked, or rather forced, to forget and even to forgive those who tortured us and those who committed heinous crimes against us. We are asked to do so even though the perpetrators of those crimes have not been tried in court. What’s more, we are being forced to forgive even though they have never asked for forgiveness.

Without considering the merits of the case involving the Spanish lawyer, his is one of common criminality. Our case involves crimes against humanity, not common crimes, and therefore they must be tried in court under the laws of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity. These crimes cannot be forgotten. Crimes against humanity must be prosecuted, and they must be recorded in history.

Roxana Olivera is currently a Journalist in Residence at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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Two weeks ago, the Secretariat of the United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum (IGF) approved the creation of the (DC PR). This new component of the IGF will provide a discussion arena aimed at the analysis of the relations between internationally recognised Human Rights and online platforms’ Terms of Service (ToS).

The ultimate goal of the DC PR will be to elaborate concrete solutions aimed at promoting responsibility in the adoption of ToS so as to ensure respect for platform users’ human rights. The proposed solutions, to be developed through an open and multi-stakeholder process, will complement initiatives such as the , the , the , the , the and the to the implementation of those principles.

Specifically, the DC PR will aim at developing guidance for responsible conduct by online platforms through the formulation of model contract clauses able to protect the interests of both commercial and non-commercial internet users, in accordance with the existing framework of international law, including human rights law.

The need for a DC PR

Online platforms, such as social networks and other interactive online services, give rise to transnational “cyber-spaces” where individuals can gather and express their personalities imparting and receiving information and ideas. By reason of their transnational dimension as well as of their private nature, online platforms are regulated through contractual provisions, unilaterally established by the platforms’ providers and enshrined in the platforms’ ToS.

Hence it may be argued that, by regulating the use of information within a specific online platform, ToS undertake a normative function that . However, differently from the Law of the Land, the contractual provisions delineated in the ToS can be applied in several jurisdictions, thus affecting platform users in spite of their geographical location. Furthermore, the private decisions that may be taken by the platform provider in order to implement the ToS (e.g. removing content which is not compatible with the ToS provisions) are not subject to the constitutional guarantees that frame national jurisdictions.

In addition, it should be noted that the spectrum of rights and remedies that are granted to platform users through the ToS may be difficult to comprehend or even read in its entirety, and similar platforms may be regulated through very different provisions that might be unilaterally modified by platform providers.

For these reasons, it seems necessary to engage in a common multi-stakeholder effort aimed at producing model contractual provisions, which can be incorporated in ToS in order to provide intelligible and solid mechanisms to protect platform-users’ human rights and foster platform providers’ responsibility.

Such an effort appears necessary to equip platform users with common and easy-to-grasp tools to guarantee the full enjoyment of their human rights. From this perspective, the absence of binding international rules in this area despite the universal nature of human rights represents a real challenge, which can only be effectively overcome through a multistakeholder effort, taking place in accordance with the UN ( by the UN Human Rights Council together with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights). Hence, the concept of “platform responsibility” aims to stimulate behaviour in line with the principles laid out by the UN Guiding Principles, focusing on the responsibility of private corporations to respect human rights and to grant an effective grievance mechanism.

The ability of users to recognize and reward this type of behaviour has the potential to generate a virtuous circle, whereby consumer demand drives the market towards human rights-compliant solutions. Accordingly, the utilisation of model contractual-provisions may prove instrumental to foster trust in online services for content production, use and dissemination, allowing platform-users to directly identify those platforms that ensure the respect of their rights in a responsible manner.

The establishment of the DC PR seems therefore necessary to nurture a multi-stakeholder endeavour aimed at the elaboration of the aforementioned model contractual-provisions.

An Action Plan

The establishment of the DC PR aims at fostering a cooperative multi-stakeholder effort in order to elaborate concrete and interoperable solutions to protect platform-users’ human rights. To that end, the involved stakeholders will interact via the DC PR mailing list in order to jointly delineate a set of model contractual-provisions, defined as Platform-User Protections (PUPs).

While the long-term objective of the DC is to produce several PUPs in order to ensure the protection of individuals’ rights in a range of contexts, the first exercise of the DC will be the definition of a set of PUPs focusing on the specific issue of content removal.

The aforementioned goal will be achieved through several steps:

a)????? An initial meeting, to be held at the , which will aim at elaborating a? DC PR roadmap while taking stock of the existent initiatives that may be of interest for the purposes of the DC PR;

b)????? A consultation period aimed at identifying current best practices, e.g. recognising current contractual provisions/mechanisms utilised by platform providers for content removal and the related remedies to challenge the removal decision;

c)????? The elaboration of draft PUPs and the circulation of the different draft as Request for Comments on the ;

d)???? Finalisation of PUPs as soon as the “rough consensus” around the most appropriate wording will crystallise;

e)????? Definition of appropriate PUP labels (similar to those utilised to characterise the various Creative Commons Licenses) to be associated with each PUP. The utilisation of PUP labels is meant to be instrumental to enable platform providers to signal the inclusion of PUPs in their ToS and help Internet users to easily identify the platform-providers who are committed to securing the respect of human rights in a responsible manner.

In recent years, several initiatives have been taken to scrutinise and assess platforms’ ToS, particularly in the context of intermediary liability. For this reason, the first step of the DC PR will be to take stock of the existing initiatives and assess the potential of building upon prior work in this area for the purpose of putting the “Protect, Respect and Remedy” framework of the Guiding principles into practice.

Such stocktaking exercise will take place at the first meeting of the DC PR that will be open to all interested stakeholders. Attention will also be put into the mechanisms adopted by search engines for the implementation of the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case, which places these particular platforms in a central position to ensure the effective protection of individual rights.

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In last week, Berners-Lee was responding to recent revelations of state-based surveillance in the United States and elsewhere. The father of the web also contends that a ‘digital Magna Carta’ would need to address the often-conflicting rights of users and producers in online environments.

Calls for the calibration of competing rights are not new. At least since the early 2000s, legal scholars and social scientists such as , , and have articulated about reforming intellectual property (IP) laws for emerging realities. The proliferation of digital and networked technologies continues to facilitate social, economic, and political shifts. New transnational political economic arrangements are premised on the ability to employ information and communication technologies (ICTs) to coordinate global production chains. studying the impacts of the ICTs that decentralized, network technologies are transforming historic relations generated during industrial economic times. Advocates for the rights of creators point out how these changes are disrupting existing business models and threatening entire industries.

IP law regimes—most often in the forms of copyrights, patents, and trademarks—are used to incentivize creative endeavours and to protect the moral rights of creators. In doing so, these legal regimes help to convert knowledge—communicative and cultural resources that circulate within communities and contribute to their maintenance and growth—into marketable forms of rent-seeking information.

However, suggests that these systems have led to two contradictory outcomes: increasing returns for rights-holders and a “digital divide”, whereby there is increasing disparity between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of contemporary capitalism. Scholars Tzen Wong, Graham Dutfield, and their contributors that IP law is regarded as playing various roles in the maintenance of this development disparity. From this perspective, the ‘digital divide’ is a symptom of the global political economy, within which growing inequality between and within states is exacerbated due to differing levels of access to and control over digital technologies and content.

Govindan Parayil, while knowledge-based economic activities generate growth and wealth for the owners of proprietary information; this also results in inequity for those with restricted or no access to this information and the ability to use existing knowledge in productive ways. A of transnational corporations conducted by Sean Starrs, a PhD Candidate at 91亚色, highlights how the contemporary political economy is marked by the concentration of wealth in developed states, particularly the United States.

Bridging the digital divide between and within states is becoming a key focus of international and domestic policy initiatives. Civil-society organizations as well as governmental and international organizations and forums have proposed ‘information-communication technologies for development’ (ICT4D) as a means of enabling greater connectivity for disadvantaged persons in post-industrial as well as industrializing states. ICT4D proposes that the proliferation of ICTs will alleviate poverty and inequality by providing new groups with the technological tools necessary to engage in capitalist activities. However, as Jan Nederveen Pieterse , this approach often fails to recognize that the digital divide is not entirely digital; instead, the digital divide entails socioeconomic considerations, including the ability to use ICTs as well as digital content for various purposes.

Human rights-based claims are becoming prominent in struggles to address economic inequality and bridge the digital divide. For example, Access to Knowledge (A2K) movements related to international intellectual property debates challenge the privileging of economic and proprietary rights over the rights of users, citizens, and consumers.

, Professor of Information Studies at Syracuse University, A2K movements focused on a number of areas—including life saving medicine, educational materials, biodiversity and the prevention of famine as well as knowledge circulation in digital contexts—have “become a master frame linking many formerly disparate elements of communication and information politics, business, policy, and law. As an intellectual and political movement, A2K is based on a reappraisal of the nature of property rights over information and networks” (p. 12).

As Internet governance and informational policies are adapted to meet contemporary realities, addressing and balancing these sets of rights will be important for bridging the digital divide and economic inequality.

Note: This post is based upon a paper that the author will present at the in Toronto, Canada and reflects the on-going work of his dissertation.

Joseph F. Turcotte is an IPilogue Editor, a PhD Candidate and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow in the Communication & Culture Program (Politics & Policy) at 91亚色, and a Nathanson Graduate Fellow at the Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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The internet is not a lawless wild west. Images on the internet are not automatically public property – copyright, personality rights and all other aspects of the law apply. This article will list out the most relevant areas of the law and then analyze the situations of international dating using Canadian headshots for dating or porn site advertisements according to the each legal point.

Relevant Canadian Law to Date – A Primer

Scraping in the Law

The issue of general material scraping arose in the 2011 Supreme Court of British Columbia case . The court struggled with defining scraping in order to apply the law to it.? The judgment included the opinion of law Professor and copyright expert in explaining that scraping content was allowable if it was indexed and transformative. Indexing is a broad term for the interconnectedness of the internet through hyperlinks and meta data that web crawlers use for searching and organizing internet material. Because the judge found the scraping in the Century 21 case qualified as a form of indexing, the issue of whether scraping was transformative was not relevant to his decision. Professor Trosow’s comment directly quoted in paragraph 53 of the judgment remains helpful,

“The relevant question in my view is whether the materials are being utilized in a transformative manner in order to provide a usable and informative aid for the end-user searching for information about listings.”

The judgement includes a thorough legal summary of the concept of transformation – which I will summarize as any change that adds something new to the original expression, thus creating a new work. The concept is used primarily in American law, but was also referenced and described in the 2002 Supreme Court of Canadsa?case, .

International Servers and the Law

The Supreme Court confirmed copyright liability for servers outside Canada. 2004’s stated, “A content provider is not immune from copyright liability by virtue only of the fact that it employs a host server outside the country.” This is a digital extension of of the ,

27. (2) It is an infringement of copyright for any person to […]?(b) distribute to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright. […] a copy of a work, sound recording or fixation of a performer’s performance or of a communication signal that the person knows or should have known infringes copyright or would infringe copyright if it had been made in Canada by the person who made it. [emphasis mine]

Responsibility Regardless of Intent

The Small Claims Court of Yukon disregarded the “accident” defence in a 2012 digital website photo theft case that closely mirrors the Rehtaeh Parsons one at hand. A tour operator photo ended up on the website of its direct competitor. As stated by the Court in paragraph 12 of ,

“At the end of the day, it remains unclear how the plaintiff’s aurora photo found its way onto the defendant’s computer and website.? However, it is not a defence to the present action that the copyright infringement was inadvertent.? The plaintiff is still entitled to damages equal to the loss he suffered from the infringement."

Personality Rights and a Person’s Image

Identity exploitation is also a tort that is potentially relevant to photos on the internet. As I’ve outlined in a prior about a recent digital extension of personality rights,

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s 1997 decision outlined that the two requirements to satisfy the tort are identity exploitation for commercial purposes, and exploitation that clearly captures the personality of the plaintiff. The test for commercial purpose was solidified in 1996 in , which outlined the need for the likeness to be predominantly connected with the sale of the consumer merchandise.

At the root of this issue is the principle from the 1977 Ontario Supreme Court Decision that stated

". . . it is clear that Mr. Athans has a proprietary right in the exclusive marketing for gain of his personality, image and name, and that the law entitles him to protect that right, if it is invaded."

Photo Privacy in Quebec

is not within the digital sphere, but it is applicable as with regards to personality rights issues. Here in 1998, the Supreme Court confirmed, using the Quebec Civil Code and the Quebec Charter, that there is privacy infringement whenever an image is published without consent if the person is recognizable. It is unclear if such a ruling would hold Canada-wide, but it is a possibility.

Fair Dealing

The Canadian law provides for copyright violation in cases of fair dealing in .?Research, private study, education, parody or satire, criticism or review, and news reporting are all justifications for works use that do not infringe copyright. Some recent court interpretations of fair dealing law were recently released by the Supreme Court in?,? and?. Taken as a whole, they confirm a generous interpretation of fair dealing that asserts the user right as a defence. This is particularly true of the enumerated education principle, which has now been broadly expanded to more closely match the US’ fair use exemptions for academic institutions.

User Waivers from 3^rd Party Photo Hosting

Some social media sites from which the photos are scraped require users to give up their personality or photo rights. There has yet to be a common law case in Canada or the US on the issue of personal social media site waivers. There are two closely related cases, decided divergently.

The 2012 US case , determined that website waivers are most valid when they require an affirmative acknowledgment of the contract. Conversely, in the 2011 Canadian case the Supreme Court of British Columbia determined that where there was an industry standard as such, proceeding into a website without express agreement could constitute a contract.

Application to Cases Like Parsons’

In my opinion, I don’t think dating or porn sites that use images of Canadian women have a strong legal case to defend themselves from potential legal action. Using the prior list of relevant legal issues, I will make a cohesive argument in favour of the Canadians whose images are used in these advertisings.

Scraping and the Law

The photos may be scraped off a prior website, but they are likely not indexed or hyperlinked to that prior website. The creators of these advertisements likely want there to be little link between the original source photo and the eventual advertisement featuring the photo. Thus, by the definition presented in Century 21, the photo reuse is a new type of non-indexed scraping.

Without indexing, the only remaining argument is transformative. The advertisement creators could argue that by adding in additional text – in the example of the Parsons case “"meet Canadian girls and women for friendship, dating or relationships” – that the addition is significantly transformative. I would argue that because the advertisement doesn’t change the photo, but just adds or overlays texts, the advertisement is arguably drawing attention to the original work rather than creating a new work.

International Servers and the Law

The Supreme Court statement from? is helpful because it keeps open the possibility that Canadians whose photos are in circulation on any server around the world can potentially use the Canadian legal system to defend their rights. In the case of the Parsons dating site, which was based out of Vietnam, it means that Canadian courts could go after the Vietnamese infringers.

Responsibility Regardless of Intent

The? case is an indicator of the direction courts might take in response to plaintiffs claiming ignorance. This is immensely important in regards to technology-based conflict. It’s important for court judges to demand parties in a conflict demonstrate a reasonable amount of understanding of and responsibility for their actions. In the case of dating site administrators, it’s my strongly held opinion that “I didn’t know it wasn’t okay to take photos of young women off the internet and put them in my Facebook ads” will not protect these parties as it is consistent with the general legal axiom that ignorance of the law is an unacceptable defence.

Personality Rights

Identity exploitation also presents a strong tort for Canadian victims of image scraping. To have one’s photo used in an advertisement without consent meets the Krouse and Gould threshold because the dating or porn site garners a commercial purpose. The advertisement facilitates traffic for new member signups on the porn or dating site. In the advertisement at hand, Parsons likeness is clearly captured; it is unmistakably her face.

Photo Privacy

Similarly there is a strong case when the? precedent is considered. That said, there is a chance it might not hold for victims outside Quebec, as indicated by the use of Quebec-specific law in the judgment.

Fair dealing

It’s my opinion that image scrapers would be hard-pressed to find any fair dealing justification for their activities in either the Copyright Act or even Supreme Court decisions expanding user rights via fair dealing.

I don’t believe companies trolling the internet for photos – with software or by hand – have the protection of a fair dealing defence. Writ large, I feel the culmination of all recent, major copyright cases in Canada makes clear this principle of application; whether the fair air dealing exception is applied broadly or narrowly based on the public good or commercial profits accrued. The more public good provided, the more broad the fair dealing exception. The more commercial profits provided, the more narrow the fair dealing exception. By this broad, over-arching principle, the use of Canadians' images by dating and porn sites provide us little public good but do provide the site administrators profits. Instinctively, the companies using these images would face a more narrow application of the fair dealing exceptions.

But this conceptual analysis is insufficient to discard fair dealing altogether. To dig into the heart of this legal matter, the companies engaging in this behaviour would have to prove that their dealing falls within one of the enumerated principles of fair dealing, and then would have to prove, by a contextual analysis of the facts, that their dealing is fair in accordance with the six factors as elicited in :

• the purpose of the dealing;
• the character of the dealing;
• the amount of the dealing;
• the alternatives to the dealing;
• the nature of the work; and
• the effect of the dealing on the work
  
  

It is my opinion that it is unlikely for the analysis to surpass the first stage of the fair dealing test, as the dealing does not fit into any of the (research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism or review, and news reporting). However, if it were to pass this stage of the fair dealing analysis, it is my opinion that a contextual analysis of the facts would result in a finding that no fair dealing exists in this case. I would arrive at this conclusion by arguing that there are legitimate alternatives to the dealing (models could be hired and photoshoots done by the advertisers), that the amount of the dealing is unfair (pictures are being substantially reproduced), that the character of the dealing does not support fair use (pictures are being used for commercial gain), and that the effect on the work is prejudicial (the images and the reputation of those pictured are potentially harmed).

User Waivers from 3^rd Party Photo Hosting

Dating and porn sites may have a strong argument if they only scrape Canadians’ images from third party websites or social media networks with sign-up contracts that ask users to waive rights to their likeness. This legal reality may be unpopular in the court of public opinion. concerns about the tension between consumer rights and lengthy digital contracts. A movement is burgeoning to demand more proactive and legible terms to be disclosed to consumers. Services to of these contracts and rumours of apps in development to provide layperson translations to contract legalese showcase the problems that these contracts pose.

I would tend to agree. In my opinion, these contracts are unreasonable because they are extremely lengthy and overly legalistic. The majority of users are not able to understand these agreements, which is a big problem. It also points to potential invalidity due to the unconscionability doctrine.

To start, there are many seminal “ticket cases” in the UK that call into question contracts where one party does not adequately appreciate the terms of the contract such as the 1970 case . ?

Similarly, Canadian contracts can be set aside for inadequacy of consideration or unequal bargaining power ( and ). contains a lengthy list of factors to consider in order to properly assess bargaining power: a plaintiff’s ignorance of business, illiteracy, ignorance of language of the bargain, blindness, deafness, illness, developmental disabilities, and other similar challenges. is another foundational case in Canadian unconscionability law. A more holistic approach to bargaining inequality, recently emerged in , where the Supreme Court said there is no definitive list of factors; courts should be alive to conditions of the parties circumstances, unique pressures and situational vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, focused on the “distress of the weaker”, and ?used the word “disparity” in its analysis of unconscionability.

Whether the highest ranking or recent cases lay out a definition of unconscionability that would cover third party website waivers is uncertain. I do believe – for some more-vulnerable users – our growing reliance on the largest social media sites and their ubiquity in our day-to-day lives may meet the power imbalance threshold required for unconscionable bargaining. The more users depend on a service for the function of their day-to-day lives, the more the potential for imbalance and disparity in bargaining power. Dependancy creates bargaining weakness.

Two Systemic Criticisms: Statutory & Social Failure

In my opinion, lack of political action and social concern are failing young Canadians who don’t want to show up in an advertisement for an online dating or porn site.

I.?????????????? The Statutory Problem: Not Going After the Scrapers

There exist easy alternatives to image scraping. There are to access free images. Governments should take steps to protect individuals – both by demanding websites only accept advertising from companies who agree to ethical photo sourcing standards and by establishing a regime to police and crack down on scrapers. Scrapers operate with software and servers from countries around the world, so it would likely be necessary to create a global framework of international agreements to combat this activity. It would be onerous, but I believe it’s worth the work involved.

II.???????????The Social Problem: Blaming the Photo Posters

In observing the aftermath, the Rehtaeh Parson’s case has caused a rash of victim blaming mirrored by that seen in many cases of sexual violence. For instance, the of the Parsons image scandal ended with an inappropriate call-to-action for increased conservatism in photo posting. A media professor from Queen's University says the unfortunate use of Parsons' image in an ad could be a "teachable moment" for parents trying to instruct their children to be vigilant about uploading photos to the internet.

"We are in a new day where people think that if they find something on the web it's free to use, and that's not necessarily the case," she says. "In this case, we're seeing the hurt that that can cause."

In another instance, the included a similar warning from the Ontario Privacy Commissioner.

"Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, described what happened with Parsons’s image as a 'strong reminder that we can rarely control the use of our pictures once we share them online.[']

'The unfortunate reality is that people give out far too much information about themselves, believing that their information is ‘private’ and they are safe behind their screen. You are not!' Cavoukian said in an email statement to the Star.

'We all need to take steps to protect ourselves online, especially on social networks,' she added. 'Young people must be especially careful to consider the potential risks, and make it a practice to only post photos that they want everyone to see, including strangers and prospective future employers.[']

'If not, don’t post it!'"

Given that Canada has not acted to regulate against scraping of its citizens’ photos, it’s disappointing to me that the go-to response to the Parsons photo misuse was to tell people to be more careful about what they post online rather than condemn and go after the wrong-doers. I believe it’s a particularly insensitive approach when you consider the root of the Parsons case. Rape culture tells young women to avoid walking alone, to watch what they wear, and to restrict their own liberties in order to avoid sexual violence. Rarely does it focus on .

Here, where we should have a vigorous call to go after those social media sites and scrapers who expropriate and commoditize photos of young women, we are instead turning to young women and telling them to restrict the images they put online.

I conclude this post with , Rehtaeh’s mother, written in response to uncovering the dating site photo. It makes the link between photos and human rights better than I can.

"It is disgusting that even in death, my daughter's image is still being exploited. When I see these violations, whether it be the singles ad stealing Rehtaeh's photos -- or the people who contact me and to say negative things such as she should not have been drinking, she was a troubled teen, she was in the wrong crowd -- I sit back and reflect on the reality of who Rehtaeh truly was. Then I think: So what if someone is a troubled teen or was drinking -- as if their behavior or emotional state somehow give permission for others to abuse them."

Denise Brunsdon?is an IPilogue Editor, a Western University JD/MBA Candidate, and researcher for GRAND (Graphics, Research and New Media) Centre and Commercialization Engine. She is also the social media volunteer at Sexual Assault Centre London.

The post Dating Sites Scrape Internet for Women’s Photos, Including Those of Deceased appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Stakeholders from all of the above-mentioned groups and more gathered at the in Indonesia, October 22-25, 2013, to discuss all manner of issues related to including online surveillance, privacy, big data, online child protection, youth perspectives, cybersecurity and cybercrime, freedom of expression, ?and?access to information, human rights in context of the Internet, jurisdictional conflicts and harmonization, international development, and of course, intellectual property (relating mostly to copyright and domain names). First convened by the United Nations in 2006, the IGF is the world's largest and highest-profile conference wholly dedicated to the betterment of the Internet and its continued governance and preservation. With no binding goals, negotiations, or decision , the ostensibly affair provides a platform for otherwise-rare direct dialogue between multiple cross-sections of society and mass cross-pollination of ideas, general principles, and best practices, which can be taken back by members to be used in their own decision-making processes.

This year, the Indonesian government—whose national population includes over 63 million Internet users—hosted approximately 2000 delegates from 111 countries, who explored this year's across 135 workshops, focus sessions, open forums, roundtables, and panels (with more participating remotely and millions checking in on Twitter). Organizers made a concerted effort to integrate into the sessions more tangible policy outcomes that participants could take away with them, as well as attention to initiatives. Meanwhile, “ ” and “” constituted an underlying all discussions, while “” and “” infused electric static into the air.

As providing complete coverage of all news, events, discussions, and ideas that emerged during the week-long IGF within one post would be impossible, this article will restrict itself to highlighting certain issues directly encompassed by intellectual property law, particularly those explored in a titled, “”.

1. Square Laws in Round Processes: Has Copyright Policy Gone Awry With Respect To Technological Reality?

This question challenges the notion that current and trending copyright legal frameworks are at all suitable for the way Internet infrastructures and associated technologies work today, suggesting increasing misalignment between laws designed in a more analog world and technological processes where copying is strictly incidental to otherwise legitimate use of the work. Glenn Deen of NBCUniversal asserted that technology should be “policy-neutral”, as in developed without any particular policy favoured or hindered by or coded into the technology itself. In other words, copyright policies should be created such that they fit the technology, rather than the other way around. Other panellists agreed but maintained this is currently not the case—technology has not been made policy-neutral, and through phenomena such as institutional capture of standards fora, it has in fact been designed to promote and enforce certain policies (examples of this are technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) systems). , argues , takes the Internet for granted and distorts its basic architecture, such as by turning neutral online intermediaries into unofficial law enforcement entities with respect to user behaviour.

2. The Librarians Strike Back: This Isn't the Copying You're Looking For

of the made a compelling case for copyright law to pay closer attention to the kind of copying involved in different situations. Sharing others' concerns over unbalanced copyright frameworks, she explained how in a library research access context provides a clear illustration of copyright laws not fitting an Internet environment. According to Broad, text and data mining is one of several “productive, non-harmful uses” that operated freely outside the realm of copyright in a print environment, but are now captured by copyright frameworks purely through the incidental copying that occurs as part of Internet-enabled technological processes today. She compared licensing text and data mining, in essence the extraction of information, to “placing a toll on the information highway”.

While Article 5.1 of the exempts "[t]emporary acts of reproduction...which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process,” in transmitting content between computers, this is a narrow exception that will not encompass all cases that require protection, such as text and data mining. Furthermore, as Broad points out, such a framework presumes infringement unless proven otherwise; one must make an exception rather than find the use not infringing at all to begin with.

Lastly, e-books and their associated licensing regimes present “a huge challenge” in terms of access for consumers, academics, public libraries, and the visually impaired, among other user groups. With respect to the visually impaired, users must overcome obstacles by acquiring a right to remove from the content (recently enshrined in the universally lauded , the first-ever agreement to limit rather than expand copyright), and by possessing the technical ability to actually remove the TPM and access the content through assistive devices. In these respects, some at the IGF spoke of licensing regimes “defeating the purposes of the Internet”, particularly in the context of , where public libraries can play a valuable role in providing access to information.

3. Say It to Belie It: The Language of Limits and Exceptions in Copyright Law

One current problem that IGF 2013 participants identified with current copyright law is its unbalanced nature: in many jurisdictions and on an international level, rather than balancing copyright against user/access rights as if the latter were of equal weight, laws provide for overarching copyright with specific exceptions that are explicitly carved out. The starting point of the law is not one where the limits and exceptions hold the same weight as copyright; this is reinforced by their being referred to precisely as “limits” and “exceptions” to an otherwise default backdrop of established copyright. Speakers suggested instituting a new international norm that would conceptually elevate rights of access and other “limits” or “exceptions” to the same level as copyright in order to better protect them, as seen in the Marrakesh Treaty. As asserted, “We often talk about copyright substantive rights...and having carve-outs for limitations and exceptions.... [W]e should dispatch with that language and think about them as equal partners balancing each other.”

4. Meanwhile at WIPO: Additional Issues & Initiatives

Initiatives and ideas beyond those outlined above were featured in IGF 2013 presentations. These included - according to WIPO legal officer Paolo Lanteri - the ; a WIPO study on and a WIPO-compatible, world-standardized licence (to be released within the next few weeks). Regarding the latter, Ari Gema of Creative Commons Indonesia pointed out the need to educate the general population on the concept of copyright before introducing the Creative Commons license, hinting at cultural and regional differences in the significance and relevance of copyright, and the potential implications for corresponding law, regulation, and policy.

Lest the Marrakesh Treaty be a one-time in terms of internationally-accepted limitations to copyright, the IFLA is working on a , to establish “a binding international instrument on copyright limitations and exceptions to enable libraries to preserve their collections, support education and research, and lend materials”.

Lastly, in keeping with the spirit of IGF, a panel titled, "" that "multistakeholderism" was the preferred approach to formulating internet copyright policy and frameworks going forward, despite drawbacks such as being potentially inefficient, time-consuming, or inconclusive.

5. Say 你好?to язык.?????(aka Internationalized Domain Names)!

In a palpable boost to principles of multilingual access and globalization of the Internet, CEO Fadi Chehadé revealed at the IGF 2013 opening ceremony, to rousing applause, that Arabic, Russian, and Chinese i were delegated to the Internet root for the first time. This means that one can now register websites ending in “dot [insert Arabic, Cyrillic, or Chinese characters here]”, resulting in expanded online accessibility for those who use technology—including keyboards—exclusively in one of the three languages added. This will likely have an impact on trademark law in different parts of the world, in the context of branding and domain names, although trademark as managed by the (TMCH) currently provide for ASCII (English and Latin) characters alone.

Logging Out

As mentioned above, this was but a peephole into the ongoings of IGF 2013. Even live, it could only be experienced in self-tailored slices given how much was going on at any given moment. For those who are interested in learning more, are available on the IGF website and further comments and insights abound on the Twitter backchannel, not to mention the multitude of papers, articles, blog posts, updates, and analyses written throughout and in response to the forum. If we care about preserving, protecting, and bettering the Internet as we know it, the least we can do is start by getting to know it.

Cynthia Khoo is a JD Candidate at the University of Victoria. She is currently completing an exchange semester at the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law.?

The post When the Internet Has a Party, Everyone's Invited: IP Law Issues at the Internet Governance Forum 2013 appeared first on IPOsgoode.

EA’s primarily posited two arguments that the court ultimately found dissuasive. EA relied on the in terms of its basic right to create and distribute the video game. In response to Keller’s assertion of common law and civil code protection against the tort of appropriation of likeness – also known as the right of publicity – EA argued that the video game met the transformative use test, which allows the First Amendment to supersede publicity rights. Second, EA leaned on (“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”), claiming that Keller’s suit qualified as an attempt to punish EA for exercising its political rights. The court rejected these arguments.

Right-of-Publicity vs. First Amendment
California’s right-of-publicity is based in common law on , which supports a claim with these four conditions: use of the plaintiff’s identity, appropriation of that name or likeness to the defendant’s advantage, lack of consent and resulting injury. California validates this and adds that, in addition to ?“all the elements of the common law cause of action,” there must also be a "knowing use by the defendant as well as a direct connection between the alleged use and the commercial purpose.”

EA argued the transformative allowance, which allows the First Amendment to trump publicity rights if sufficient transformation has occurred between the original inspiration and the new work. EA argued that it had added significant creative change so that the players’ likenesses within the game were transformed to surpass existing as a simple imitation. In arguing this, they relied not on the transformation of the likeness per se, but in the concept of the game as a whole as sufficiently transformative. One judge dissented from the majority, agreeing with the "game-as-a-whole" transformation argument. The remainder, however, didn’t agree.

The majority argued that there was simply too much direct copying of Keller’s likeness to meet the transformation threshold. Indeed, there were many direct comparisons.

“In the 2005 edition of the game, the virtual starting quarterback for Arizona State wears number 9, as did Keller, and has the same height, weight, skin tone, hair color, hair style, handedness, home state, play style (pocket passer), visor preference, facial features, and school year as Keller.” (p. 7-8)

As was emphasized by Judge Jay Bybee, upholding the lower court decision,

“Keller is represented as ‘what he was: the starting quarterback for Arizona State’ and Nebraska, and ‘the game’s setting is identical to where the public found [Keller] during his collegiate career: on the football field’.” (p. 16)

Outside of the transformation argument, EA also posed the related argument that because the game maker included numbers but not the?last names on the in-game jerseys, the likeness threshold was not met. This argument received little traction. As the verdict found - and as one succinctly pointed out - EA “intentionally designs its sports games to allow gamers to circumvent this formality, providing a means to easily upload entire rosters of actual player names, after which player jerseys contain both the player’s number and name. Although EA could easily block this feature (as they do for profanity), they choose not to.”

The Anti-SLAPP Statute
California anti-SLAPP law is best summarized as an attempt to prevent suits that “masquerade as ordinary lawsuits but are brought to deter common citizens from exercising their political or legal rights or to punish them for doing so” ().

By siding with Keller’s publicity rights, the court inherently rejected the idea that Keller’s suit was a frivolous attempt to trample EA’s constitutional rights.

Canadian Application
Though there are many in Canadian appropriation of personality jurisprudence, our domestic requirements would have been met handily in Keller v EA.

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s 1997 decision Krouse v Chrysler Canada Ltd. outlined that the two requirements to satisfy the tort are identity exploitation for commercial purposes, and exploitation that clearly captures the personality of the plaintiff. The test for commercial purpose was solidified in 1996 in , which outlined the need for the likeness to be predominantly connected with the sale of the consumer merchandise. One example given in the verdict directly correlates to Keller v EA,

As a result, Elvis Presley posters, pewter replicas of a statue of Elvis Presley, a “Howard Hughes” game which included Hughes’ name and other biographical information, and a board game utilizing the names and biographies of famous golfers, have all been found to infringe the right of publicity: see Presley, supra, p. 1358. All were found to be commercial products which were not vehicles through which ideas and opinions are regularly disseminated. (para 21) (Emphasis author's own.)

Thus, there is?not much doubt that in a Canadian context, the case would have been similarly decided.

Analysis and Opinion
There are two particularly unsettling components of this case: that it took the courts so long to come to this fair decision, and that even with it, there was still a dissenting judge who supported the transformation argument.

This decision is fair based on the reasons argued, but it is also intuitively fair in my opinion because of the lack of options afforded to the individual players. NCAA bylaws prevent college athletes from receiving compensation for their skill or status. This means they can’t sign endorsement deals or barter away their likenesses, even if they wanted to do so. Yet, at the same time, the NCAA is signing exclusive rights deals with video game makers like EA in order to create these profitable NCAA league video game franchises. The likeness appropriation is clear, as is the commercial motivation. Quite simply, the system was designed to exploit the players. Keller and the co-plaintiffs made the right decision in suing.

Finally, arguing that the game was sufficiently transformative in its whole so as to override the individual identity infringement is a difficult pill to swallow. Yes, it is a video game. Yes, there are ways to alter and change certain characteristics of the game. Yes, there are no last names on the jersey. Yes, there are many potential arguments that amplify the differences between IRL (in-real-life) Keller and video game Keller. But at the end of the day, they are all attempts to create legal loopholes to avoid the ultimate truth: a company does not have the right to profit from a person’s identity without permission. The transformation allowance is meant to be more substantive and rights-protective in its application. It is gratifying to see the court reject EA’s attempt to use the First Amendment’s transformation allowance to override personality rights, because to do so would have been an insult to both crucial legal concepts.


Denise Brunsdon is an IPilogue Editor and a JD/MBA Candidate at Western University.

The post EA Loses Battle to Put Athlete’s Likeness in Video Game appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Background
The decision originates from an investigation to track down a home burglary suspect. On the day of the eventual arrest, police contacted T-Mobile to track a cell phone they believed the suspect was using. T-Mobile provided the information to police at three times throughout the evening. The police had a warrant for the arrest, but not for the three traces. The suspect was found using the T-Mobile device at a motel, along with some of the stolen goods.

The Supreme Court allowed the arrest and criminal charges to stand, however, the plain-view evidence seized as a result of the geolocation data that the police gathered without obtaining a warrant was not valid. The State attempted to use the "emergency aid doctrine," which would provide them an exception to the warrant requirement, but failed.

The Privacy Arguments
The privacy issues at work here break down into three key components. Firstly, mobile phones collect an incredible amount of personal information. Secondly, a reasonable person should not expect this private information to be distributed without consent. Thirdly, mobile phones could be seen as no longer a luxury, but a foundational part of one’s daily life. It is not reasonable to expect people to opt out of mobile phone use in order to maintain their privacy. These are enforced in the reasons for judgment,

With increasing accuracy, cell phones can now trace our daily movements and disclose not only where individuals are located at a point in time but also which shops, doctors, religious services, and political events they go to, and with whom they choose to associate. Yet people do not buy cell phones to serve as tracking devices or reasonably expect them to be used by the government in that way... Using a cell phone to determine the location of its owner can be far more revealing than acquiring toll billing, bank, or Internet subscriber records. It is akin to using a tracking device and can function as a substitute for 24/7 surveillance without police having to confront the limits of their resources. It also involves a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not anticipate... Finally, cell-phone use has become an indispensable part of modern life. The hundreds of millions of wireless devices in use each day can often be found near their owners -- at work, school, or home, and at events and gatherings of all types. And wherever those mobile devices may be, they continuously identify their location to nearby cell towers so long as they are not turned off.

The court also leaned on the , which states,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue except upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the papers and things to be seized.

This legislative right was interpreted by the court to include “a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location of their cell phones."

This is a natural extension and validation of the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in . In this unanimous judgment, the court found monitoring of a vehicle’s GPS system to be a form of illegal search and seizure.

Canada's Privacy Policy
Though Canada has , the judiciary has been going in a distinctly different direction from the US courts when it comes to interpretation, as evidenced by some recent Ontario decisions.

In 2010, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on the admissibility of evidence seized during a search warrant in .? Similar to the New Jersey case, the police used Bell Canada’s GPS capabilities to locate a stolen cell phone in order to execute their search warrant.

Though the court did find a violation of the defendants’ Charter Section 8 “right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure,” it did not find so because of the mobile phone GPS search. The court set a contribution threshold based on GPS-to-arrest timing and accuracy, which it then found had not been met.

Let me deal with the cell phone location evidence.? The Bell search found that the stolen cell phone was at the Pearson and Abelard area at about 10:35 p.m. It is only information as to where the cell phone was at a particular moment in time. The culprits might have been driving through the area at the time.? It might have been much more persuasive if Bell had found the cell phone there for an extended period of time and it could have been pinpointed with more accuracy.? This additional evidence was necessary given the lack of other evidence in this case. (Para 52)

In , the Ontario Court of Appeal passed on another opportunity to guarantee mobile phone privacy in . The court found it acceptable for police to search mobile devices without an additional phone-specific warrant if the phone had no password protection. In the case of smartphones, this ability for police to seize and explore the phone could certainly disclose the user’s locational data history among other types of personal, private information.

Commentary
The demand to recognize geolocational privacy is . It is the and we need in this area.

It’s disappointing that the Canadian courts have thus far leaned toward reducing protections on privacy and not increasing them. This is particularly true in the Canadian context because telecommunications are so heavily regulated and Canadians have fewer options when choosing a provider. When our choices are reduced, our consumer bargaining power to demand that these companies refuse police requests for our locational information is diminished.

When the courts refuse to step up, the legislators must. In my opinion, the federal government needs to pass privacy protections that restrict police power to use our mobile devices against us without the necessary warrants.

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There were significant international tensions at play in this negotiation. With of print materials currently in an accessible format for visually impaired persons (VIPs) and the print disabled, this treaty represents a significant educational and social benefit. In the international sphere, the ability to access these materials may represent a human rights issue; Article 13, the right to education, and Article 15(1)(a), the right of everyone to take part in cultural life, of the (ICESCR) are both important considerations for treaty-makers and nations.? On the other hand, the rights of the copyright holder are supported by several international agreements; Article 9(2) of thedictates the “three-step test”, which limits the ability of nation states to provide exceptions to copyright.

The Canadian provides exceptions for those with “perpetual disabilities”, where? “perpetual disability” (with respect to print works) is defined as “a disability that prevents or inhibits a person from reading a literary… work in its original format.” Section 32 states that reproduction of a work in an alternate format for persons with a perpetual disability is not a circumvention of copyright. Canada, however, is one of fewer than 60 countries that currently limit copyright to promote access for VIPs and the print disabled. Even in countries where limitations are allowed, these exceptions often do not cover the import and export of a converted work, even between countries with similar exceptions. This leads to costly negotiations between governments and rights-holders, which further limits access. ?This treaty may not only provide an international standard for limitations, but also represent an end to the complicated licensing process that is currently in place.

A significant issue in the meeting was the exception allowing for the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) for VIPs and the print disabled. TPMs allow copyright holders to control how their work is accessed and used in an online environment. ?Specialized technologies can prevent copying, printing, or making alterations. TPMs can also prevent the use of certain applications - for example, text-to-speech software - a limitation which is clearly devastating for people with print disabilities. Section 41.16 of the states that the circumvention of TPMs are not prohibited for the sole purpose of making the work accessible to persons with perpetual disabilities. Article 11 of the , however, protects TPMs internationally. This provision ensures that contracting nation states provide adequate protection and legal remedies against the circumvention of technological measures for copyrighted works.

Midway through negotiations, a proposal to provide exceptions for the visually impaired and print disabled read as follows:

“A Member State/Contracting Party shall ensure effective and necessary measures in accordance with that Member State/Contracting Party’s national copyright law regarding technological protection measures such that beneficiary persons are not prevented from enjoying limitations and exceptions under this instrument/Treaty.”

This proposal reached a near-consensus in its initial stages.? The United States, however, had proposed a limiting clause on this exception which would allow VIPs and the print disabled the benefit of this exception only where “appropriate and effective protection measures have not been taken.” This response was expected, as even before negotiations had began the United States and the European Commission appeared to be .

Late on June 25^th, 2013, a consensus was reached on the treaty provisions. A was issued and all the articles were adopted. Both those lobbying for and against broad exceptions appear to .

A wide-ranging international treaty now appears to be a certainty; however, actual implementation by nation states is still at issue. Supporters must now fight to ensure that this treaty is ratified and enforced. It seems that while these negotiations concluded on June 28^th, conversations regarding copyright exceptions and increasing access for the visually impaired and print disabled are likely far from over.

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