McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Famous Dead People
MClark:
Thanks for the replies.
It looks like the question doesn't have a simple answer. I suspect much of it depends on what you write and how much the heirs want to push the issue.
I'll keep looking around for the answer and if I find anything definitive I'll post it here.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: MClark on November 11, 2011, 04:04:25 PM ---Thanks for the replies.
It looks like the question doesn't have a simple answer. I suspect much of it depends on what you write and how much the heirs want to push the issue.
I'll keep looking around for the answer and if I find anything definitive I'll post it here.
--- End quote ---
Just to muddy the waters, there are also certain laws protecting parody and other such uses of a persona, real or fictional. Its how all those political cartoons get away with it. But I dont know any of the intricacies of the actual Laws, or if they are a Federal or State thing. I suspect you are correct in that it depends on What you actually write and how strongly the heirs feel about it. If you make the person a heroic badass that recycles and saves kittens from trees, they probably won't care so much...
jesster64:
Stuart Kaminsky uses a lot of dead people in his Toby Peters mysteries, which are pretty good. He weaves famous people like mae west and howard hughes into his stories. It saves a lot of time because you allready know the characters without a lot of backstory.
OZ:
Farmer's Riverworld books included a lot of famous dead people but I think Clemens was probably the most recent. Are you talking about the long dead or the recently dead?
MClark:
Hi all,
I asked a writer friend of mine this question and she pointed me to this blog post:
http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/01/can-you-be-sued-for-libeling-dead-john.html?mid=54
Another blog post she mentioned was this one:
http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/could-i-be-liable-for-libel-in-fiction.html
(Note item 5 on how you cannot libel the dead.)
Obviously this isn't the same as asking a lawyer, but both blogs look respectable - and the first one gives enough links you could theoretically look it up yourself at a local state law school library.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version