New York Updates Rt. of Publicity Law

On November 30, 2020, New York Governor Cuomo signed legislation establishing a "Right To Publicity" for deceased individuals to protect against the commercial exploitation of their Name or Likeness.

The law establishes a postmortem right of publicity to protect performers' likenesses for 40 years and bans nonconsensual computer-generated pornography (often called "deepfake" pornography). New York is the first state in the nation to explicitly extend a person's right of publicity to computer-generated likenesses.

New York joins four states that have outlawed certain kinds of deepfakes related either to pornography or to elections, addressing concerns that manipulated media is fast becoming a widely-recognized concern.