Commercial Use of Your Photo Without Permission: Your Rights

If a people-search site is selling access to your yearbook photo and name, you may have a claim. Probably not the one you expect. The strongest theory right now is right of publicity, the commercial use of your photo or name without permission, and not copyright. On September 24, 2026, the Ninth Circuit made that path harder for the sites to dismiss. It did not hand anyone a check. Here is what changed, and what you can do this week.

Can a site use my photo without permission?

Sometimes, yes. A business can legally reproduce a photo it holds the copyright to. What it cannot do, at least in California, is use your name or face to sell a product without your consent. That second act is a right-of-publicity violation, and it is the claim that fits a paid people-search page. The photographer may own the picture. You own your identity.

The Classmates.com ruling, in plain terms

The Ninth Circuit affirmed class certification in Nolen v. PeopleConnect, Inc., the company behind Classmates.com. Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for the panel. The certified classes cover California residents whose names were searchable on the site, who never registered as users and never donated a yearbook. Classmates.com advertises more than 470,000 digitized yearbooks, makes them searchable with text recognition, and turns those results into a pitch for paid subscriptions. The plaintiffs say that use violates California Civil Code section 3344, the state right-of-publicity statute.

Why it matters is arithmetic. Certification lets a large group of California residents litigate together instead of one plaintiff at a time. Each proven violation of section 3344 carries a statutory floor of $750, even without proof of loss, plus any profits traceable to the use. Multiply that across a class and the exposure is real.

Read it narrowly, though. The court certified the class. It did not rule that PeopleConnect broke any law. Berzon’s opinion left the central merits question, whether making a name searchable beside an advertisement counts as a “commercial use,” for the trial court to sort out later. An open door is not a verdict.

Which law applies: copyright or right of publicity

Here is the distinction most people get backwards. You almost certainly do not own the copyright in your old yearbook photo. Under copyright law the author is usually the photographer or the studio the school hired, so a copyright takedown is rarely your lever. We laid out who holds which right in trademark vs copyright vs patent.

Right of publicity is a separate right, and it is yours. It protects your name, likeness, and identity from being used to sell something without consent. That is why the Nolen plaintiffs sued under section 3344 rather than the Copyright Act. The two theories can collide. Right of publicity is one of the few state claims that survives copyright preemption, because the harm is the commercial use of your identity and not the copying of a file. We walked through that survival test in our note on copyright infringement in state versus federal court.

California keeps sharpening the statute

The timing is not an accident. California recently added injunctive relief to section 3344 and extended liability to digital replicas, so a court can now order a use stopped rather than only award damages after the fact. Pair a certified class and statutory damages with a live injunction remedy, and the people-search business model looks newly exposed in the Ninth Circuit.

What you can actually do now

Certification is not a payout. Do not wait for a settlement notice to act. If your data is being monetized, a few moves are worth making, roughly in order of speed:

• Send an opt-out or deletion request to the specific site. Most people-search platforms publish a suppression form, and California’s privacy laws give residents a deletion right against data brokers.
• Send a cease-and-desist letter when the opt-out is ignored or the use is clearly commercial. A letter citing section 3344 and the site’s own conduct carries more weight than a web form.
• Track the class litigation if you are a California resident who fits the certified definition. There is no claim process yet, and joining nothing today costs nothing.

One caution on numbers. As of September 29, 2026 there is no judgment and no fund to claim from in Nolen. Anyone promising you a Classmates.com payout is guessing.

Found your name or photo behind a paywall you never agreed to? The useful first step is a short read of which right you actually hold and which forum enforces it. That review costs far less than chasing the wrong claim. It also tells you whether an opt-out or the class is your real path.