It seems like the overarching theme of this week’s discussion has been asking what is or isn’t ethical in regards to using a deceased person’s likeness. One person wrote, “When an actor or model participates in the creation of a piece, they are part of a community”, while another said, “The way I see it, the estate should have the right to sue in cases of unauthorized use AND misuses of the deceased’s image…”. While I agree that in an ideal world, estates or family members (or FNOKs) would have full agency over the deceased’s public image/works, I believe, like Jack said, that it’s nearly impossible to do that – and we have Barbara Streisand to thank for that. The Streisand Effect is the rule that if a famous person (or their estate) makes a fuss about something, say an unauthorized, scandalous use of an image, that image will then receive much more attention than it ever would have before.
Not to be super cynical, but like we’ve discussed in class before, it’s extremely difficult to scrub things from the ‘cloud’ once they’re on there. In the case of celebrities, I think it’s just something they have to accept comes with the territory. For us regular Janes and Joes though, I definitely agree that there should be safeguards or channels in place for legal action to be taken against unfavorable use of images.