united-states law-in-fiction
Hypothetical: &quot;War as Text&quot; lawsuit in Cryptonomicon
<p>In Neil Stephenson's book "<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Lw-00wTgBy8C&amp;pg=PA52&amp;lpg=PA52&amp;dq=cryptonomicon%20war%20as%20text%20filing%20suit&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Cz2ZPMF3-a&amp;sig=ACfU3U3IVaaOASgdQJPX_VxBqZ1ZAHmfZg&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjNp4_P7J_pAhUBonEKHTOPDuoQ6AEwAHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=cryptonomicon%20war%20as%20text%20filing%20suit&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cryptonomicon</a>" there is an account of legal battles over a poster that was designed for an academic conference on "War as Text":</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>[The artist] started with a black and white half-tone photo of a haggard World War Two [soldier]. He worked this image over with a photocopier, blowing the half-tone dots up into rough lumps like rubber balls chewed by a dog and wreaking any number of other distortions on it [...]. Then he added a few elements in colour; red lipstick, blue eye shadow, and a trace of a red brassiere strap peeking out from the soldier's unbuttoned uniform shirt.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The book goes on to describe how the soldier is subsequently tracked down. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The artist who made the poster then confessed that he had simply copied it from a book. [...]. High-powered trial lawyers converged on the small town in Kentucky [where the soldier now lives]. [...] The veteran announced that he was filing civil suit against the [conference organisers]. The organising committee pulled the poster from circulation, which caused thousands of bootleg copies to go up on the World Wide Web [...]. They also filed suit against the artist, whose net worth was about a thousand dollars and debts (mostly college loans) amounting to sixty-five thousand.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I know this is all fiction, but do any of the parties in this have any actual grounds for a lawsuit? The book publisher and original photographer do not figure in the story, but the poster seems to have been both transformative and fair use. The soldier's case is not explained. Does he have some kind of libel or invasion of privacy case?</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Does he have some kind of libel or invasion of privacy case?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The description of the "art work" is somewhat inconclusive. I will assume that the red lipstick and blue eye shadow in the fictional poster are suggestive of that soldier's "makeup".</p>

<p>If the World War Two soldier were still alive and a straight male, he might have a claim of defamation insofar as the poster portrayed him as having a sexual orientation which is inaccurate, detrimental to his reputation, and tending to dissuade others from associating with the soldier. Policies against sexual discrimination aside, no straight male likes being falsely characterized as to sexual orientation (in part because of the undeniably harmful, lasting impact something like this would have in his environment).</p>

<p>The defendant's possible allegation that the "art work" was hyperbole would be unavailing. That is because the suggestive poster is likely to impinge on viewers a detrimental concept of the soldier even if it is obvious to those viewers that the poster was not an actual, color photograph taken of him during the World War II.</p>

<p>In most jurisdictions in the US, the defamed soldier would need to file suit within a year from the publication of the poster (an exception is Tennessee: six months) because the statute of limitations for claims of defamation is shorter than most others.</p>
