Ownership

Slate ran a story about legal proceedings related to the shootings Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, something that had dropped off my radar in the years since it happened. Apparently, the name, image and likeness of Nikolas Cruz, the shooter, are now the property of shooting survivor Anthony Borges. The goal here appears to be to both block any participation by Mr. Cruz, who us now serving a life sentence for the shooting, in interviews, documentaries or other media appearances, and to prevent other people from making any direct mention of Mr. Cruz in commercial media, like documentaries. It's an interesting use of the law. Given that Mr. Cruz and his attorneys agreed to this particular aspect of the settlement with Mr. Borges, it seems unlikely that anyone would be able to challenge it in court.

I understand the motivation and the rationale for this, but I'm a bit dubious about it as a matter of public policy. Not because I think that it's a bad idea, per se; I can see why damnatio memoriae would be sought by survivors of attacks and the families of those killed; people tend to take an interest in those who commit atrocities, and that interest can quickly balloon into fame. Being able to block that would have clear benefits. But the Florida legislature already passed a law removing the previous requirement that death sentences be imposed only by unanimous agreement of the sentencing jury, just so they'll be more easily able to execute the next person who does something like that. If it's understood that hard cases make bad law, setting out to weaponize the law to be used against people who frighten us has a lot of potential to backfire.

While there are a lot of complaints that representative governments don't always do a good job of catering to the desires and needs of the citizens, sometimes the problem is that they can do too good a job of it. A willingness to tweak or change the law every time it doesn't go far enough to satisfy people's outrage leads to laws that are much easier to use as weapons than people might realize. And people tend not to pay much attention when laws are used against people who are easily written off.