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"Your legal name is part of the public record. It's not private or protected information."

Your name most certainly is protected (under law but not really)


Oops - by "protected" I meant in a trade-secret sense. If I find out that your legal name is Joe Cool and tell my buddy about it, you can't make any sort of trade secret claim or whatever.

You can get various kinds of property rights to use of your name of course but that's a different thing altogether. Prince tried to prevent publication of his legal name at one point (he had changed it) but I don't think it ever went to trial (he would have lost).

Quote:

Libel/slander are very serious crimes and can do severe damage to a person's name. Esp. if this person is a private citizen. Legal action can and should be taken.


If I tell all my neighbors "X is a child molester!" and X did in fact spend time in prison for child molestation, then it is not libel/slander: truth is an absolute defense in the US (that’s not true in most countries, but it is in the US).

The difference between being a public and private person is not so big: the only change is that a public person has to prove “actual malice” (in essence not only was the statement false but I knew it was false when I said it, or didn’t care if it was true or false).

There are gray areas like saying “X is a pig!” Maybe it’s true X is fat, but X might not be dirty or smelly. A lawyer might clean your wallet dissecting the word “pig” looking for actionable & untrue elements. But the topic here is what happens if some idiot reveals a porn star’s legal name, and I don’t see how libel/slander applies. I would look to anti-stalking statutes in CA instead.
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"If they can't picture me with a knife, forcing them to strip in an alley, I don't want any part of it. It's humiliating." - windsock