Page 157 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
celebrities who have been more successful than the Estate of Elvis Presley are David and
Victoria Beckham, who registered as trademarks the nicknames ‘Becks’ and ‘Posh’.

Individuals in other jurisdictions enjoy more tangible rights to privacy than in the United
Kingdom, which in some cases are premised upon the right to one’s image. For example, in
´
Aubry v Les Editions Vice-Versa Inc (1998) the Chief Justice in Quebec, Canada, dismissed
an appeal against a decision of the Court of Appeal made by a photographer and the publisher
of a magazine found to have transgressed the right to one’s image by taking and publishing
a photograph of a 17-year-old student without her permission. The Chief Justice observed
that the protection of privacy ‘must include the ability to control the use of one’s own image’.
Furthermore, it was held that the girl’s right to protection of her image was more important
than the appellants’ freedom of expression and right to publish the photograph without her
consent.

In Germany the law does not use the expression ‘personality’, nor does it recognize a general
right to personality. However, an individual has the statutory right to contest another person’s
use of his name. If there is a threat that such use will continue, it is possible to obtain an order
requiring the person infringing the right to stop. Provisions also exist relating to the right to
one’s likeness. However, there is an argument in Germany that these special remedies need
to be diversified because they run counter to what appears a deep-rooted German suspicion
of monetary remedies.

8.3 The Calcutt Committee

The Government Committee on Privacy and Related Matters chaired by David Calcutt QC,
which reported in 1990, was the most recent committee to consider the issue of whether a
statutory tort of privacy should be introduced into English law.

8.3.1 General principles

Any proposed new law, especially one that would have the effect of curtailing freedom of
speech and freedom of information, ought to satisfy two basic criteria before it is allowed to
pass onto the statute books:

1. Can the proposed law work efficiently, in other words with certainty and consistency?
This is a question of definition and scope.
2. Is there an overriding social need for legislative control?

Definition and scope
The Calcutt Committee had to consider what privacy itself encompassed and the
circumstances in which the public interest in disclosure would override a person’s right of
privacy. The Committee concluded that difficulties over adequate definitions did not
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