Last week, a website named "The Official Kobe Video Website" appeared. It is offering the sale of an unflattering video of Kobe Bryant, purportedly taken in late May outside a shopping center in Newport Coast, California, in which Bryant has an impromptu conversation with a small group of fans. During his conversation, Bryant disparages his employer, as well as a number of his teammates. He saves his most vitriolic remarks for Andrew Bynum, the Lakers' highly touted 19-year-old center. Bryant insists that Lakers should "f---ing ship his ass out."
As reported by Howard Beck in today's New York Times, the men responsible for the video--a few guys in their early 20s who are unwilling to identify themselves--do not believe that Bryant was aware of the video being taken. Those same men contend that someone offered to buy it from them for $100,000 in order to keep it private, but they refused, and instead intend to make it available to anyone willing to spend $1.99 to watch it, provided they receive 50,000 orders. It's unclear how many orders they have thus far received. It's also unclear if the video is all that entertaining, since other than a consistent flow of swears and some unvarnished remarks about teammates, Bryant has offered similar, albeit less explicit, commentary on his blog. Still, as ESPN's Henry Abbott writes today, the video strikes many as a distasteful attempt at "gotcha" journalism.
Could Bryant successfully sue the Kobe video guys? "Miss Gossip" over at AOL FanHouse is a student at Stanford Law School, and she addresses that issue in a post today. Here is an excerpt:
If the goal is to sell the video to a media outlet, then Kobe could sue for money damages or an injunction preventing the release of the video. As a celebrity he has a legal right in his own publicity image -- he can't stop you from showing his image on the news, but he can stop you from profiting from his image without his permission. The KVG guys told [FanHouse's] Brett that Bryant didn't know he was being filmed -- which sure sounds like he did not grant his permission for them to disseminate the video for profit.Miss Gossip is alluding to the right of publicity, which is the use of the plaintiff's name or likeness, without consent, for the defendant's commercial advantage. As Rick recently examined in regards to Drew Brees' efforts to avoid having his image used to promote his mom's congressional campaign, the right of publicity protects against commercial loss caused by appropriation of an individual's name or likeness for commercial exploitation. The right varies in strength by state, but it would be an avenue that Bryant could consider, in the highly unlikely event that he sought legal recourse. A key question would be whether the video is providing a newsworthy purpose (see Rick and Howard's debates on that subject) and to what extent Bryant's celebrity status diminishes his legal right to privacy. Also, some states, like Illinois, have passed High Tech Peeping Tom laws, whereby is it illegal to record or transmit live video images of a person without his or her permission--but the catch is that the person must be in a "private location" and Bryant was not.
Additionally, you have the super-legal argument that these KVG guys are just plain dumb. Why would thousands of people pay for the video when five minutes after its release they could probably see it for free on the FanHouse?
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