The Right of Privacy. venture into obiter dictum. Yet these decis ions unquestionably suggest the elaboration of a fuller bill of rights1 on the subject. The publication of a photograph was for bidden in a contest where votes were to be cast to determine the most popular individ ual. The voting was unsolicited and the pho tograph proposed to be used was unauthor ised. An individual may not be compelled to lend himself or his vanity toward such a public exhibition to learn to see himself as others see him. If the proposed spectacle should be shocking to one's sense of mod esty and refinement, so that he is unwilling to be a party thereto, it is the duty of the [iablic to let him alone. To molest him un der such circumstances would be a violation of the right of privacy. It can be no abridge ment of the freedom of speech to prohibit publicity when it invades the rights of an other. If it is not restrained when a right is to be protected, it would mean to give coun tenance to lawlessness. It can be said to be unequivocally" estab lished that a private individual has a right to be protected in the reproduction of his like ness in any form. This is a right of privacy. It does not, however, follow that every pho tograph is an invasion of this right. Where the publication of a life of a noted inventor was contemplated, which was to contain his portrait, both unauthorized by him, the court declared the law to be that while the right of a private individual to pro hibit the reproduction of his picture or photo graph should be recognized and enforced, this right may be surrendered or dedicated to the public by the act of the individual, just the same as a private manuscript, book or painting becomes, when not protected by copyright, public property by the act' of pub lication. There is a distinction, however, between a public and private character. A private in dividual should be protected against the pub lication of any portraiture of himself, but
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where an individual becomes a public charac ter, the case is different. A statesman, au thor, artist or inventor who asks for and desires public recognition, may be said to have surrendered this right to the public. When anyone obtains a picture or photo graph of such a person and there is no breach of contract or violation of confidence in the method by which it was obtained he has the right to reproduce it, whether in newspaper, magazine or book. It would be extending this right of protection too far to say that the general pubilc can be prohibited fiom knowing the personal appearance of great public characters. Such characters may be said of their own volition to have dedicated to the public, the right of?ny fair portraiture of themselves. It has been declared that whatever right of privacy an individual has, dies with him or her. This was legally asserted where an association of women selected a woman who had been dead for fourteen years, as a typical philanthropist and proposed to have a statue of her executed by a competent professional sculptor. This was met by a protest on the part of a single living relative. Death de prives us all of rights in the legal sense of that term. When the woman died, her own individual right of privacy, whatever it may have been, expired at the same time. The right which survived, was a right pertaining to the living only. It is the right of privacy of the living which can only be sought to be enforced. That right may in some cases be itself violated by improperly interfering with the character or memory of a deceased rela tive, but it is the right of the living and not that of the dead which is to be recognized. A woman may very well in her lifetime have been most strongly adverse to any pub lic notice, even if it were of a most flattering nature, regarding her own works or position. She may have been of so modest and retir ing a nature that any publicity during her life would have been to her most disagreeable
