Book Review: Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America by Samantha Barbas

On January 4, 2016, a federal appeals court ruled that Target stores could sell a variety of products related to the life and legacy of civil rights hero Rosa Parks—books, a movie, and a commemorative plaque—without violating Parks’ publicity rights.Sarah Pratt McLean’s Cape Cod Folks, published in 1881, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek, published in 1942.[...]these cases serve a strong theme and important contribution of Barbas’s book: the role gender played in the development of personal image law.Readers who tend to empathize with the mass media might find Barbas’s broader links between privacy litigation and the practices of such “industries of counterimage” to provide an unfair or incomplete picture.[...]in maintaining a focus on law that arose out of embarrassing or offensive publications, Barbas might neglect a parallel issue that arose around intrusions of physical space.