Can You Quote Donald Duck?

I’m honored that a rather elderly article I wrote for Wired.com on synthetic humans is referenced in a book review in the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities. The article was written in the early days of computer animation, when “virtual humans” — computer-generated characters that could interact to external stimuli — were just beginning to be possible.

Image Is Everything is one of the first stories I wrote for Wired.com was about the possible that virtual versions of famous people could be used commercially without their approval — a notion that seems quaint in this era of cyberstalking and digital personae.

Here’s the official citation:

Johnson, Peter (2001) “Can You Quote Donald Duck?: Intellectual Property in Cyberculture,” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities: Vol. 13: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol13/iss2/4

See also an early story for ClickZ, Putting Virtual Humans to Work, and