: Re: Can someone publish a story that happened to you? Can someone take a story that happened to you, without your knowledge, and publish it? Using your name and specifics, and take the copyright

@Bryan361

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"Can someone take a story that happened to you, without your knowledge, and publish it?" Of course. Newspapers does this all the time. No one asks the president's permission before writing a news story about the latest bill he presented to Congress. Or on a more personal level, if Joe Blow is arrested, the newspapers don't ask his permission before writing a story about it.

Historians do this all the time. If a scholar is writing the history of, say, World War 2, he doesn't need to get permission from every soldier who was involved in the Normandy invasion before he's allowed to write about the Normandy invasion. Etc.

If someone writes things about you that aren't true and that make you look bad, you can sue them for libel. But in the U.S., truth is an absolute defense against libel. If what they wrote about you is true, they have every legal right to publish it.

It's possible that there are details of the case, or something in your local law, that would give you some legal right to prevent them from publishing. You could check with a lawyer. But frankly, I doubt you would have a case.

As Cyn says, nobody owns facts. Copyright law means that you own your expression of the facts, the words that you wrote or said or sang or whatever to describe the facts. But you don't own the facts.

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