Lads mag Nuts is being sued for falsely attributing interview quotes to a lap dancer who had been caught on cctv in what the tabloids headlined as a 'lesbian sex romp' with Dannii Minogue.
The News of the World had first exposed its 'exclusive' story of how Dannii had been dirty 'dannii-ing' with Janine Marshall, who was at the time a lap dancer at London's Puss In Boots club. Marshall known as 'Jupiter' had given an interview to the paper and expressed her regret that her mum found out about her career through the press. She had not however given any interview to Nuts magazine which proceeded to patch one together headlined "Dannii Minogue played with my boobs", drawing largely on extracts from the News of the World story. The magazine even put the 'intetview' into first person and allegedly invented quotes. As the Press Gazette reports today, Marshall is now suing Nuts for false attribution and making the interview up.
Dannii Minogue has previously litigated over the story, eventually securing copyright over the leaked cctv pictures. That didn't help her much as the pictures still found their way onto the internet.
Marshall's, like Minogue's legal (as opposed to lap) action is based on the moral right of ownership in relation to copyright. Under the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), copyright falls into 'ownership' in the commercial sense - in this case Nuts is accused of lifting quotes and text from the News of the World so it would be the paper as commercial owner of that copyright who might have a right of action - BUT the author of a copyright work (such as a documented interview or a published statement) retains what is termed the'moral' right of ownership in the work. That right includes the right not to have comment falsely attributed to oneself or derogatory treatment of the work. It will be interesting to see (1) if this gets to court without settling ans (2) if it gets to court what level of damages a court would deem appropriate in these circumstances.
s84 CDPA - False Attribution
Another case involving cctv footage stolen from nightclub
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