Tell Minnesota Lawmakers: Reject the PRINCE Act

The Minnesota Legislature is considering a dangerous bill that would let people and their heirs censor uses of their names and likenesses.

The bill—dubbed the PRINCE Act—was hastily put together in response to Prince’s passing. It’s a bad idea, badly executed. Let’s tell Minnesota lawmakers that this wrongheaded bill is not the way to honor a great artist’s legacy.

Under the PRINCE Act, individuals would be able to assert control over uses of their name and likeness, and have a court order unwanted uses taken down. Similar “publicity rights laws” have proliferated in recent years. The original idea makes sense: using someone’s face to sell soap or gum, for example, might be embarrassing for that person and she should have the right to prevent it.

But states have expanded the law well beyond its original boundaries. For example, the right was once understood to be limited to a person’s name and likeness, but now it can mean just about anything that “evokes” a person’s identity. In some states, your heirs can invoke the right long after you die. In other words, it’s become a money-making machine, one that can be used to target all kind of legitimate speech.

If it passed, the PRINCE Act would be the most restrictive publicity rights bill in the United States. After a Minnesotan dies, her heirs would be able to continue to assert control over her name and likeness for as long as they have a commercial use for it, in perpetuity. This misguided bill does nothing to honor Prince. Instead, it creates a new way to censor free speech.

Minnesotans: tell your legislators to make the PRINCE Act a nonstarter.