how do studios get away with the “purely coincidental” disclaimers on TV/movies like The Dropout

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No names are changed or anything … is this what “life rights” are? Why do they say it’s a coincidence then?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

So first, most portrayals of famous people are usually going to end up getting permission to use the likeness or will fall under fair use (such as south park being a parody).

The disclaimer is more for everyone else who is generally not a public figure. There are hundreds of millions of people in the US, and there are not that many names. Chances are if you create a character, it will have the same name as a large number of people, and could possibly even resemble a few of them. These similiarities are not intentional, but absolutely can have consequences for people who share the same name. People may google the name and think that you are actually who the fictional character ia based off of, and react in some way.

That disclaimer is there to provide some cover, basically saying “We didn’t know about you, and didn’t intend to copy your likeness”.

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