Can You Buy The Rights To Someone’s Story?

Are our life experiences for sale? Well, that would depend on who's paying.

Credit: Elizabeth Williams/Associated Press

There are several things that bother me currently about Donald Trump’s court case in New York, not least of all Donald Trump himself of course.

But this week, we heard from his former fixer Michael Cohen, who told the court that he made payments on Trump’s behalf to three people: Stormy Daniels, Dino Sajudin and Karen McDougal.

In this new litigious age it is a tale as old as time, a man makes a payment to stop someone who they never met talking about something they never did. See also, Prince Andrew.

In the good old days they could just call them crazy and be done with it, but it’s getting a little bit more technical now – although there is always the trusty gold-digger trope to fall back on.

But there was one thing that struck me about the reporting of his payment to McDougal. The Times reported that Cohen testified that he’d had ten to twelve conversations with Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organisation chief financial officer, about how to handle the payment ‘to purchase the lifetime rights to McDougal’s story.’

And that got me thinking, are our stories, our life experiences as human beings, really for sale?

I mean yes, when we are telling them, for example if we sell our story to a publisher in exchange for us writing a book about our experiences, though we still hold onto the copyright. To a lesser extent yes, if we sell our story to a newspaper, although increasingly they hold onto the copyright and you sign away your rights for them to resell that particular telling of your story.

But can another human buy ‘the lifetime rights’ to your story? Particularly a story that didn’t happen? As a novelist I find my mind running riot here, I mean, instead of spending years slaving over a novel, could I not just make a story up and get Donald Trump to pay me not to write it? Because that is what we are lead to believe happened here, and elsewhere (see also, again, Prince Andrew).

A couple of years ago I attended a case at the High Court in London, and I wrote about it in the piece that I’ve posted below. A former MP, who again claimed that his wife had no story to tell about his mistreatment of her, went to great lengths to try to stop her having the right to talk about her life experience with him, yet the judge deemed that she – and all or any women who have suffered domestic abuse – has the ‘right to tell their story.’ The UK judge recognised that the impact of doing so may have a ‘disproportionate impact on improving and enhancing the public debate.’ In other words, women need to know that other women have been through the same thing, and bringing this into the light is the only way of attempting to stop violence against women and girls.

When I was trying to get divorced back in 2018, my ex-husband’s lawyers refused to grant me a divorced based on his unreasonable behaviour unless I made a commitment in writing never to speak what had happened in our marriage – everything he was claiming didn’t happen. As a writer, there was no way that I could agree to this. And as a woman, it was necessary to remind his lawyers that it was the 21st century and the idea that I needed to buy my freedom from marriage by handing over my freedom of speech was preposterous. We went to court and I got my divorce on my grounds. It was, for me, a matter of principle.

I have also been in the position of speaking out against the bad behaviour of men, or rather highlighting it so other women are able to protect themselves better (those of you who have been following this substack for the last few years will already know this, of course), and what this experience taught me was that, far worse than the behaviour of the man who was harming you, was your insistence on talking about it. Why can’t women just keep quiet?

But is it always women? Where are the silencer payments from women to men? Where are the NDAs, the litigation? Where are the women attempting to buy the ‘lifetime rights’ to men’s stories about their bad-behaviour-which-never-happened?

I’m sure there are cases like these, and do feel free to share, but if there are they are in the minority, and yet, what prevails are the tropes about crazy, golddigging, vengeful exes. Funny that.

And what about when a man wants to tell a story? Which brings me onto another subject that I have felt uncomfortable about in the last few weeks, Baby Reindeer. For those last few people on this earth who have not yet watched this Netflix series it is ostensibly about a struggling comedian, Richard Gadd, and his experience with a female stalker. Netflix claims at the start of each episode that this seven-part series is based on a true story. There is no disclaimer that some scenes may have been created for dramatic purposes, and this may possibly end up costing them dearly.

Last week, the ‘stalker’ known in the show as Martha outed herself (after people on social media had done the same) and went on Piers Morgan’s show to claim her innocence. Now, the jury is out as to her insistence on her whole and complete innocence, and I have my suspicions about how honest she is able to be with herself, but she is clearly a very, very vulnerable woman. Spend an hour in her company watching her interview with Piers Morgan and it is obvious to anyone, so how Richard Gadd did not see this, I don’t know. But the wider point that Piers Morgan was trying to make and the bit that should have Netflix’s lawyers feeling a little hot under the collar is that even if she did stalk Gadd to the extent he insists, she has never been convicted that we know (and this was certainly not depicted) of the violent offences and sexually violent offences that they dramatised. (I think I should perhaps write a substack sometime about defamation and what you can and cannot say, but for now, trust me, this could land Netflix in some serious problems.)

‘Martha’ as depicted by Netflix

But aside from that, did Gadd have the right to corrupt this woman’s story? Why is this woman just collateral damage? Particularly when the greater criminal in the piece is the man who repeatedly and violently raped him, yet it is Martha who is vilified as the real danger.

Whatever the truth of this situation, and I’m certainly not suggesting Martha is wholly innocent, Gadd has rewritten this woman’s story for the purposes of entertainment and repackaged her to the world as someone who committed acts that she has received no trial, or criminal punishment for. And, I guess, he was paid handsomely to do this. Why isn’t he being held accountable? Where are the accusations that he is trying to advance his career by using this woman? If the roles were reversed that’s what a woman would be accused of.

Which leads me back to the question at the top of this page – can you really buy someone else’s story? I guess the answer is, it depends on the sex of who is paying.

Cohen testified in court this week that Trump told him during his presidential campaign in 2016 that a lot of women were going to come forward. He said: ‘Women are going to hate me… Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’

Of course we know now that it wasn’t a disaster, he was elected president, and in fact this current court case is not a disaster either, in fact Trump is still leading in five swing states.

People often accuse women of trying to ruin men, but that is an almost impossible task. It is well-documented that men are not harmed by #metoo accusations, in fact it can be very good for their careers. Which begs the question, why do they go to such lengths to shut these women up? Do they even need to buy the lifetime rights to someone’s story?

Maybe it would pay dividends instead just to let them talk.

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