Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/211

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
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THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY. 19S as works of literature and art, ^ goodwill, ^ trade secrets, and trade- marks. ^ This development of the law was inevitable. The intense in- tellectual and emotional life, and the heightening of sensations which came with the advance of civilization, made it clear to men that only a part of the pain, pleasure, and profit of life lay in phys- ical things. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations demanded legal recognition, and the beautiful capacity for growth which character- izes the common law enabled the judges to afford the requisite protection, without the interposition of the legislature. Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone. " * Instantaneous photographs and news- paper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life ; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that " what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops. " For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons ; ^ and the evil of the invasion of privacy by the newspapers, long keenly felt, has been but recently discussed by an able writer.^ The alleged facts of a somewhat notorious case brought before an inferior tribunal in New York a few months ago, directly involved the consideration

  • Copyright appears to have been first recognized as a species of private property in

England in 1558. Drone on Copyright, 54, 61. 2 Gibblett v. Read, 9 Mod. 459 ( 1743 ), is probably the first recognition of goodwill as property. ^ Hogg V, Kirby, 8 Ves. 215 (1803). As late as 1742 Lord Hardwicke refused to treat a trade-mark as property for infringement upon which an injunction could be granted. Blanchard v. Ilill^ 2 Atk. 484. ■* Cooley on Torts, 2d ed., p. 29.

  • 8 Amer. Law Reg. N. s. i ( 1869 ) ; 12 Wash. Law Rep. 353 ( 1884 ); 24 Sol. J. &

Rep. 4(1879).

  • Scribner's Magazine, July, 1890. **The Rights of the Citizen: To his Reputa-

tion, " by E. L. Godkin, Esq., pp. 65, 67. ^ Marion Manola v. Stevens & Myers, N. Y. Supreme Court, '* New York Times " of June 15, 18,21, 1890. There the complainant alleged that while she was playing in the Broad- way Theatre, in a r61e which required her appearance in tights, she was, by means of a flash light, photographed surreptitiously and without her consent, from one of the boxes by defendant Stevens, the manager of the "Castle in the Air " company, and defendant Myers, a photographer, and prayed that the defendants might be restrained from making use of the photograph taken. A preliminary injunction issued ex parte^ and a time was set for argument of the motion that the injunction should be made permanent, but no one then appeared in opposition.