Digital Replicas, Performers’ Livelihoods, and Sex Scenes: Likeness Rights for the 21st Century

I would like to thank June Besek and Columbia Law School for the opportunity to participate on this panel to discuss the appropriate breadth, waivability, and term of the right of publicity. New technologies and the fact that the New York bill will not go retroactive to protect already deceased performers has made this a more pressing issue that needs legal solutions, not just one. What should the right of publicity protect? The right of publicity is a property right that should protect rights to company branding, advertisements, merchandise, products, and professional performance. The right of privacy should protect against very real emotional harm caused by abusing a likeness; non-consensual sex scenes are certainly on my mind right now. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is a labor union, which means our primary mission is to ensure economic justice and fair and safe working conditions for our members. This union has pioneered protections for groups of artists and journalists once thought impossible. We fight for good union contracts, marketplace rights, child protections, general safety, and laws and regulations to prevent or stop unethical industry practices. It should come as no surprise that the union is experiencing attacks on union contracts, organizing, basic consent on the internet, and intellectual properties generally. Unfortunately, as a result, this union has to sometimes question the bounds of the First Amendment in this digital era. SAG-AFTRA represents a broad swath of creators. We represent film actors, program hosts, recording artists, singers, voiceover artists, online influencers, and other media professionals. This union also belongs to an image rights coalition made up of other unions and organizations representing entertainers. I have the honor of representing 160,000 entertainers and journalists who also happen to be public figures. These are public figures who want to protect their families and possess a degree of control over how their likeness is used in the marketplace. No SAG-AFTRA member is the same; we represent 160,000 unique individuals with different business objectives, views, and priorities when it comes to likeness rights. That being said, not one single performer we have spoken to wants their likeness to enter the public domain upon death. The right of publicity and rights to digital replicas have long been a priority for the union. SAG-AFTRA members desire autonomy over their legacy and career. If there is a value to a likeness after death, their family, close friends, or a designated charity should receive the fruits of their labors. It is also worth noting that some of our members want to be excluded from commercial exploitation altogether. For example, news broadcasters are concerned their reputations as journalists would be significantly harmed if ever associated with a company or put on a T-shirt or on a doll. SAG-AFTRA members work hard to achieve any amount of marketplace value in the entertainment industry. Our members often self-subsidize much of their training and arts experience to be the talented individuals you see at concerts, on Broadway stages, and in the movies. Image and voice rights are essential components of a functional modern marketplace that returns value to labor. Value is not simply measured by celebrity gossip magazines or a large online following. Value may be a certain look, a certain voice, or one extraordinary performance or song that sticks with us. There is undeniable value to images and voices and so the question becomes, who should benefit from this value? A family or a corporation? Or, if there is consent, how about both? That seems like a win-win

Appraisal -Tendency Framework: Emotions and Perceptions of Social Injustice

This research project studies the Appraisal-Tendency Framework. Specifically, it observes whether emotional dispositions, such as sadness-proneness or trait anger, affect judgements made on whether a situation is just or unjust. In addition, this study also presents the question of whether gender impacts perceptions of fairness. All participants will be recruited from a Southeastern University. This study consists of two parts. For part one, all participants will complete an online survey to assess individual differences. Part two contains the experimental manipulations. This study uses a 2 (emotional induction) x 2 (gender of actor) design. For the emotional induction, participants will be randomly assigned to view a clip meant to induce feelings of sadness or feelings of anger. All participants will be asked to write a short response of a real-life emotional experience matching the emotion of the condition they are assigned to. They will then be randomly assigned to view a clip of an unjust situation carried out by either a female professor or a male professor. The outcome of this study could provide organizations with a better understanding of why certain emotions relate to certain judgements and decisions

Myosin IIA-mediated forces regulate multicellular integrity during vascular sprouting

Angiogenic sprouting is a critical process involved in vascular network formation within tissues. During sprouting, tip cells and ensuing stalk cells migrate collectively into the extracellular matrix while preserving cell-cell junctions, forming patent structures that support blood flow. Although several signaling pathways have been identified as controlling sprouting, it remains unclear to what extent this process is mechanoregulated. To address this question, we investigated the role of cellular contractility in sprout morphogenesis, using a biomimetic model of angiogenesis. Three-dimensional maps of mechanical deformations generated by sprouts revealed that mainly leader cells, not stalk cells, exert contractile forces on the surrounding matrix. Surprisingly, inhibiting cellular contractility with blebbistatin did not affect the extent of cellular invasion but resulted in cell-cell dissociation primarily between tip and stalk cells. Closer examination of cell-cell junctions revealed that blebbistatin impaired adherens-junction organization, particularly between tip and stalk cells. Using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing, we further identified NMIIA as the major isoform responsible for regulating multicellularity and cell contractility during sprouting. Together, these studies reveal a critical role for NMIIA-mediated contractile forces in maintaining multicellularity during sprouting and highlight the central role of forces in regulating cell-cell adhesions during collective motility.R01 EB000262 - NIBIB NIH HHS; R01 HL115553 - NHLBI NIH HHSPublished versio

Factors influencing the delivery of telerehabilitation for stroke: a systematic review

ObjectiveDespite the available evidence regarding effectiveness of stroke telerehabilitation, there has been little focus on factors influencing its delivery or translation from the research setting into practice. There are complex challenges to embedding telerehabilitation into stroke services and generating transferable knowledge about scaling up and routinising this service model. This review aimed to explore factors influencing the delivery of stroke telerehabilitation interventions, including platforms, technical requirements, training, support, access, cost, usability and acceptability.MethodsMEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science and Cochrane Library and Central Registry of Clinical Trials were searched to identify full-text articles of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and protocols for RCTs published since a Cochrane review on stroke telerehabilitation services. A narrative synthesis was conducted, providing a comprehensive description of the factors influencing stroke telerehabilitation intervention delivery.ResultsThirty-one studies and ten protocols of ongoing studies were included. Interventions were categorised as synchronous telerehabilitation (n = 9), asynchronous telerehabilitation (n = 11) and tele-support (n = 11). Telephone and videoconference were the most frequently used modes of delivery. Usability and acceptability with telerehabilitation were high across all platforms, although access issues and technical challenges may be potential barriers to the use of telerehabilitation in service delivery. Costs of intervention delivery and training requirements were poorly reported.ConclusionsThis review synthesises the evidence relating to factors that may influence stroke telerehabilitation intervention delivery at a crucial timepoint given the rapid deployment of telerehabilitation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It recommends strategies, such as ensuring adequate training and technical infrastructure, shared learning and consistent reporting of cost and usability and acceptability outcomes, to overcome challenges in embedding and routinising this service model and priorities for research in this area