Browse Issues Search Articles Submissions About the Journal Copyright Fixation Podcast Subscribe Go back to Issues 2024 BRACE LECTURE: COPYRIGHTING PEOPLE Jennifer E. Rothman Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law, Penn Carey Law, University of Pennsylvania Introduction This Essay, delivered as the 2024 Donald C. Brace Memorial Lecture, reveals the increasing convergence of right of publicity and copyright laws. This convergence requires us to reconsider some accepted conclusions about copyright and to question whether copyright is the appropriate or best frame going forward to address the rising challenges posed by deepfakes, digital replicas, and voice clones. Better understanding the ways in which copyright already extends control over a person’s identity, and may expand further to do so, has never been more essential. Copyright law can protect personality rights and privacy, but if not properly circumscribed it can also be a mechanism for owning a person’s attributes and controlling and silencing that person. If we address digital replicas and voice clones by extending copyright protection to them or using a copyright-based paradigm to do so—which is the direction we are going—we must revisit copyright doctrines that unduly limit the agency of subjects captured in copyrighted works and copyright law’s allowance of largely unfettered transferability. We must better design copyright to protect people when they become captured in copyrightable works. If we do not embrace this personality-inclusive vision of copyright law, then we must instead more rigorously enforce copyright’s boundaries, and limit its encroachment on personality rights. Full Article 72(1) Brace 2024Download Related Content Event Mar 31 2026 Copyright and the California Coast Join us for “Copyright and the California Coast,” the annual premiere Los Angeles copyright event, with keynote by the Register… Live Keeping Up With Copyright Journal December 21, 2025 C+T Panel 3 - WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE: LESSONS FOR AI FROM THE FILE-SHARING ERA 72 J. Copyright Soc'y 1053 (2025)Download Community & Professional Insights Copyright + Technology Conference Keeping Up With Copyright Law, Cases & Policy Pop Culture Technology, Innovation & the Future Journal December 21, 2025 COPYRIGHT-RELATED ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGISLATIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN 2025 72 J. Copyright Soc'y 1319 (2025)Download Community & Professional Insights Keeping Up With Copyright Law, Cases & Policy