Every day brings new outrageous stories concerning intellectual property. Today's by Jordana Lewis involves something this blog reported on in the last few days, publicity rights, and adds a new wrinkle, California's Dead Celebrities Law link here.

You have to read the whole story to get how "property" can be created from nothing more than a memory. It is a stretch to go from saying that permission is required to invade some dead person's privacy to saying that it can be sold. Then one must ask what public purpose is served by this monstrosity. Perhaps the welfare of lawyers? Or the widow of a dead acting coach? link here

Dead people have no privacy to be protected.

However, one must be careful not to create an incentive to cause people's premature death in order to nullify their privacy (especially in cases where it is highly valued). A grace period may be in order (especially if death was not by natural causes - as in Monroe's case).

Any intellectual property a person possesses passes upon death as their material property, e.g. to their inheritors or the state.

And I'm using the natural, monopoly-nullified definition of IP here.