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[ChrisWhewell]

lets say you have a friend who agrees to be in a photo that is going to be used commercially.  The photo is of a man and a woman holding each other in their arms, but part of the marketing strategy was that in the photo, the two people's faces are turned away from the camera so as to show neither of their faces, and on top of it they're both wearing big hats.  All that's visible are their clothes and forearms, and maybe a little abdominal skin of the female, who is wearing a halter.   

Later, the friends come into disagreement and one of them desires the photo not be used commercially.    Since their face is not shown and there is no way a reasonable person could discern the identity of either character, do either of the subjects have a right to demand the photo not be used ?

[Zonath]

Not under copyright law.  Copyright law generally places copyright in the hands of the person taking the picture and/or the person who has creative control over the scene depicted.

On the other hand, there does exist a separate body of law called 'personality rights', which generally prohibits the commercial use of a person's likeness without their permission.  I don't know exactly how your situation would be treated in all 50 states and 16 or so territories  (since personality rights laws are state-level law, unlike copyrights), but as a general rule, most states protect a person's 'likeness', which may or may not require the person to be somehow personally-identifiable in the picture.  At the same time, it's possible one or more state laws would prohibit this, and it would be safest if you had your models sign releases prior to your taking pictures of them.

I wouldn't say 'go ahead with this' without knowing  the exact extent of where you plan to use this photo, and what those states' laws say about this issue.  If it's not too much trouble to re-shoot with models who have signed releases, you'd probably be better off just doing that.