I welcome the initiative. At the same time, there probably needs to be some kind of "freedom of panorama" exception to take and use pictures where someone's likeness just happens to be featured incidentally/in the background, like pictures of tourist attractions, public events, urban photography etc.
Otherwise everyday photography in public spaces would become legally risky or impractical, especially in crowded areas where avoiding all faces is nearly impossible and where the focus clearly isn't on the individuals but the landmark or scene itself.
nopcode 3 hours ago [-]
The problem of filming/photographing in public is not new and this type of legislation already exists in many (all?) European countries and falls under existing privacy laws...
If a deepfake is made of someone, that person was clearly the subject of the image/video and thus violates his/her privacy.
This extra legislation would help protect in case the original image/video was taken with consent (so no privacy issue).
wizzwizz4 3 hours ago [-]
There are image processing techniques that can remove the people from a crowded shot, allowing you to take pictures of landmarks during the day as though there are no people around.
horsawlarway 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, but this is also fake.
TrackerFF 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder how that works for very similar looking people.
To me #3 sort of looks similar, but everybody else is clearly not close to similar.
g0db1t 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cesarb 3 hours ago [-]
> I wonder how that works for very similar looking people.
AFAIK, copyright allows for independent creation (unlike patents), so unless one person had deliberately copied the other's appearance, there should be no problem.
dominicrose 5 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of conspiracy theories about famous people having doubles.
hopelite 5 hours ago [-]
There are indeed many people that look very similar, and that will only increase if the efforts to eradicate uniqueness and actual separated diversity are successful, but there is also a lesson in the basic concept of, similar is not same. A single wrinkle more or less or a shift in an angle, and it’s not you anymore. The whole concept of likeness is a spurious one at best, akin to how the aristocracy functioned in the past where e.g., the depiction of their profile on a coin was a means of control too.
I was just recently trying to find an associate from my past with an unfortunately common whole full name in his language and was rather surprised at how many of the people depicted online with his name looked extremely similar to him, but upon closer discernment were surely not him. How do you discern that a “deepfake” (what a dumb term) is similar to you and not just similar to anyone else?
Also, what if AI is just trained with images of you? The consequent image will similarly only be an inspiration of you, not you, not the same as even using images in an attempt to graft a very similar facial feature onto an image or map it into a video.
It is in fact also what artists do in physical medium, they look at something/someone and are inspired by it to create an illusion that gives the impression of similarity, but it is not that thing/person. Will this new law possibly make art illegal too because people have not thought this through?
On a digital screen, it is of course also not you at all, it is individual pixels that fool the mind or give an illusion. It is really a pernicious muddling of reality and logic we have allowed to emerge, where the impression of depiction is the property of someone even though it is not that person, but also only if it is the means for control, ie money. Mere peasants have no control over their image taken in public.
The Sphere in Vegas is another good example of this on a large scale, each “pixel” is roughly 6” apart from the other and about 2” in diameter, for all intents and purposes separate objects, each only projecting one array of colors in a matrix of individual LEDs. Up close it looks no different than a colored LED matrix, only when you stand sufficiently far away is your mind tricked into believing you see something that is not really there.
Frankly, these moves to “protect” are very much a direct assault on free expression and even may create unintended consequences if art exceptions do not apply anymore either. Is it now illegal for me to paint a nude, how about from an image that I took of someone? What about if I do it really well from my own memory? What about if I use a modeling tool to recreate such a nude as a digital 3D object from images or even memory? Is AI not also simply a tool? Or is it more?
JimDabell 4 hours ago [-]
> How do you discern that a “deepfake” (what a dumb term) is similar to you and not just similar to anyone else?
Presumably the only reason to use a deepfake of a specific person is to produce things specifically in relation to that person. Otherwise, why bother? So “is this about the individual or just coincidence?” isn’t likely to be a factor in any complaint made. This seems like a hypothetical rather than something that is likely to need answering in practice.
hopelite 4 hours ago [-]
You are missing the malicious intent. Maybe I simply claim that whatever you created is a “deepfake” of me and now you owe me. I’ll just assume you have heard of parent trolls? Wanted to make a very we will see AI/Deepfake trolls?
You presume both too much and not enough.
JimDabell 4 hours ago [-]
> Maybe I simply claim that whatever you created is a “deepfake” of me and now you owe me.
How are you going to do that unless it actually looks like you?
j-bos 2 hours ago [-]
Given a large enough set of generated character there will be many that look like some real person. The cited "you" could refer to any of aesthetic collisions.
intended 4 hours ago [-]
The amazing thing is that we have different countries and they can all do their own thing.
Then we see how they’re doing and decide - hey let’s not be like them.
sjducb 7 hours ago [-]
I think this is great. It’s similar to the rights that brands have.
Imagine I drew a Coca Cola logo in paint. Now I own the copyright to my picture of the Coca Cola logo. Next I stick it on my new brand of soda. That’s not allowed.
Coca-cola own rights to their logo. You should own rights to your face and voice.
rpdillon 34 minutes ago [-]
This is a bit of an unfortunate example because it mixes copyright law and trademark law, which are very different in their character.
I think your conclusion is correct, but the child comments mentioning fair use would not apply because fair use is a copyright concept, not a trademark concept. And I'm really only familiar with US laws, so I'm not even sure if fair use is a concept in Denmark or not. They have a different notion of copyright than we do in the US.
That said, I think Denmark did the wrong thing here. I think face and identity is much closer to a trademark than it is to something that is a created piece of artwork. Trademark law is a little bit narrower because it allows you to use the trademark to refer to the company, but it prohibits you from using the trademark to confuse customers about whether this is an authentic product. This feels quite analogous to the issue that Denmark is trying to address with the deep fakes, so I'm a little bit surprised on the copyright angle, since I can imagine a lot of legitimate uses for taking a picture of someone without needing their permission and distributing it. CCTVs, traffic cams, mug shots, police body cams, and the ever-increasing trend of recording in any situation that becomes tense or dangerous. Will a civilian be told by the cop that he's violating copyright because they want to film the interaction with the police? This reminds me of when cops would play Taylor Swift loudly in the background so that people couldn't post videos of the interaction on YouTube.
mongol 6 hours ago [-]
But how would that work for news reporting? Imagine a politician doing something stupid in public. Should it not be possible to broadcast that if he disallows it?
smoe 3 hours ago [-]
In Switzerland, where people have the legal right to control whether and how their image may be photographed and published, exemptions are made if the image/person is of public interest. This is decided on a case-by-case basis, so the news org has to be willing to argue this in court.
Let's say, as an example, a married politician having an affair with someone. Generally, news sites will publish photos with the face of the politician visible but would blur the other person. The former is clearly a person of public interest, the latter is not. Even if it's a photo taken in a public space.
bediger4000 60 minutes ago [-]
Interesting concept. Case-by-case basis means that in practice only the rich and corporations have access to their exceptions, analogous to US copyright "fair use", which is on a litigated, case by case basis.
unaindz 36 minutes ago [-]
In Switzerland and probably most or all EU countries.
For example, in Spain, the schools need a signed form allowing each student's picture to be published.
The issue of money gatekeeping legal rights is another issue entirely which should be addressed for everything, not just this specific problem. It's also, in my opinion, a lot more prevalent in the US than the rest of the first world countries.
rsynnott 6 hours ago [-]
Would likely fall under fair use or an analogous right in most places. If Coca-cola does something stupid, they do not have the ability to censor depictions of their logo from reporting on it.
5 hours ago [-]
impossiblefork 5 hours ago [-]
Think of that like reproducing a particularly ill-conceived Coca Cola advertisement.
Then, when someone uses their face to promote something, someone else can repeat the face with what it promotes.
So I think the whole thing actually works in this particular case.
nashashmi 4 hours ago [-]
That could come under fair use. Like if you had a coke can on film, you could broadcast it. But you could not apply the coke brand on some other product.
xboxnolifes 6 hours ago [-]
It works the same way as news currently does. You can report on people, but you can't take a picture of someone and use it as your brand's model/logo.
aqme28 5 hours ago [-]
But you mostly already couldn't do that, right?
What specific behaviors does this forbid that weren't already forbidden?
HenryBemis 5 hours ago [-]
There is the (helpful to distinguish) 'gap' here. The media org that will report on a politician (for good or bad), will use the politician's 'news-PR-approved-actual-photo-provided-by-the-politician's-PR-team' (the serious one for war-news, the smiling one for the tax-breaks, and so on). They won't deepfake/use midjourney to create a photo of the politician eating an ice-cream while a pigeon is pooping on him (something that Colbert/Kimmel/Meyes/et al would do - clearly as a parody).
But me (not really) on my website (I don't have one) where I trash politicians (I don't) and post a photo of said politician eating poop, that should be 'frowned upon'. (Or worse to shame an ex-gf or a colleague that 'won't yield to my sexual advances').
While reading the article though, I thought of the cases where a paparazzo takes a photo of CelebrityA, then the CelebrityA posts said photo to her Insta (without getting permission from the agency) and the agency sues her. Now (in Denmark) the CelebrityA can sue the paparazzo for taking her photo in the first place (right?). This would protect people from getting uncomfortable photos.
LocalH 6 hours ago [-]
How do you plan on handling dopplegangers? They looks extremely similar (if not twin-like), yet they should each own the rights to their image and features.
reustle 4 hours ago [-]
Not sure why you're downvoted, it's an entirely valid question.
What we'll probably see is, celebrity look-alikes will be contacted to license out their own "features".
RataNova 7 hours ago [-]
It's kind of wild that brands have had more robust protections than actual people when it comes to identity
eesmith 5 hours ago [-]
You must distinguish between copyright and trademark.
He controlled the copyright to that painting. That's transformative, and the result does not meaningfully affect Campbell's ability to trade.
Quoting that Wikipedia link: "Although Campbell's never pursued litigation against Warhol for his art, United States Supreme Court justices have stated that it is likely Warhol would have prevailed.", with two quotes from two Supreme Court cases.
The second such quote is from Neil Gorsuch: "Campbell's Soup seems to me an easy case because the purpose of the use for Andy Warhol was not to sell tomato soup in the supermarket...It was to induce a reaction from a viewer in a museum or in other settings."
On the other hand, were Warhol to stick his copyrighted images on a new brand of soup, that would violate trademark law as it would confuse buyers.
codedokode 5 hours ago [-]
Japan is more advanced than West in terms of privacy protection. When filming in the street, for example, for a street interview, TV typically blurs the faces of Japanese-looking people passing by (except for foreigners).
While in the West people have no respect to other people, and don't bother to blur anything. I think it would be better for everyone if you couldn't post photos of other people without their permission and if annoying Youtubers would go to jail.
Also when talking about some celebrity on TV they often show a drawing if they could not obtain rights to a photo.
gcau 5 hours ago [-]
> When filming in the street, for example, for a street interview, TV typically blurs the faces of Japanese-looking people passing by (except for foreigners).
While in the West people have no respect to other people,
Am I missing something or is this just plain racism? There are lots of japanese people who don't look japanese, foreigners who are permanent residents, and japanese-looking people that aren't japanese - how is it respectful to protect just a certain ethnic groups privacy?
mslansn 3 hours ago [-]
It's easy: if you don't look Japanese, then you are not Japanese. A paper signed by someone in the government doesn’t make you Japanese.
falleng0d 2 hours ago [-]
It's not racist. It's all about the intention; as a company, you don't want to expend a single extra dime to comply with the regulations. since the population is pretty much homogeneous you can just blur out the Japanese and you are pretty much guaranteed to cover 99% of the cases.
Business don't exist to respect or care about people they exist to generate profit so the idea of a business "respecting" something is not even realistic.
The law is what outlines what are the limits and guarantees the basics rights to everyone.
fastball 4 hours ago [-]
Yes. The West likes flagellating itself for being racist, but in [current year] the rest of the world is invariably much more racist.
Strugger 4 hours ago [-]
White people may be shocked to learn that, in some cultures, treating your family (and, by extension, your people) with a little more respect than a complete stranger from the other side of the world is not just accepted but expected.
nashashmi 4 hours ago [-]
And what about visitors to the country? Do visitors get treated with more respect than strangers? In foreign cultures, they do. So this analogy doesn’t follow through.
codedokode 3 hours ago [-]
Foreigners don't blur faces so their faces also don't get blurred. Fair.
t1E9mE7JTRjf 4 hours ago [-]
I'd guess so judging by the downvotes.
nashashmi 4 hours ago [-]
It should be edited to avoid snarkiness.
Barrin92 5 hours ago [-]
>While in the West people have no respect to other people
Big overgeneralization. Here in Germany the "Recht am Eigenen Bild" (literally right to your own image) has existed for decades, and similar to Japan publishing images of others has some pretty big limitations and without consent is usually restricted to places or persons of public interest. To the chagrin of Google Street view or Twitch streamers
JimDabell 4 hours ago [-]
It’s more generally known as personality rights / right to publicity and a lot of western countries have laws relating to this:
I think that's rather silly. If it's a public place, and I have the right to be there and see all these faces with my eyes, why can't I exercise this right mediated by a camera?
codedokode 3 hours ago [-]
Because people don't want to be posted online and you should respect that. Seeing and posting online is different.
junaru 5 hours ago [-]
> While in the West people have no respect to other people, and don't bother to blur anything. I think it would be better for everyone if you couldn't post photos of other people without their permission and if annoying Youtubers would go to jail.
Every burglars wet dream. I have no idea what crime is like in Japan but in EU this is not an option.
codedokode 5 hours ago [-]
I am not sure but probably you can show a recording to police. But not post it online. Also punishment for burglary can be pretty heavy so better choose some other country.
harperlee 5 hours ago [-]
As an example, in Spain it is illegal to have dashcams, and its content cannot be used in a trial - but you can share the content with insurances and policeman, and recording is generally not prosecuted. It is nonetheless an opening if an officer is searching for a way to fine you...
master-lincoln 4 hours ago [-]
Please show a source for that claim. Afaik having the dashcam is legal (under conditions like it being mounted securely, not obstructing vision, recording limits so it's not surveillance,...) but publishing the video might violate data protection laws
harperlee 1 hours ago [-]
I stand corrected, what is illegal is to operate them continuously, not to just have them as I simplified above.
"If, for example, you use a continuous recording of the road in which other vehicles' license plates are visible to defend yourself against a traffic ticket, you could be violating data protection, a serious offense that could be punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 euros."
I don't understand what you're saying? Are you saying that the only reason people don't do crime is because of a lack of privacy? That's patently nonsensical.
aitchnyu 8 hours ago [-]
I assumed this was already the case. IIRC Elliot Page licensed his (earlier) likeliness for a 2013 game and sued another gamemaker for using it for free.
andsoitis 8 hours ago [-]
You don't have copyright on your own likeness in the same way you have copyright on an original work. However, the law does provide protection for individuals to control how their name, image, likeness, and other identifying characteristics are used, particularly for commercial purposes. This area of law is known as the right of publicity.
I'm not seeing anything new that prompted The Grauniad to report this, this week in particular. Maybe it is because it's news to Anglophones.
But Jakob Engel-Schmidt has been talking about this in the Danish news since April/May, back when two opposing political parties created a computer-generated fake video depicting Mette Frederiksen saying things that would have outraged voters.
Papazsazsa 5 hours ago [-]
For the sake of argument, why wouldn't this also extend to my written 'voice'?
(I'm talking philosophically by the way, not legally)
For someone like Cormac McCarthy, whose sparse punctuation, biblical cadences, and apocalyptic imagery create an unmistakable "voice," the argument seems strong. His style is as identifiable as vocal timbre e.g. readers recognize McCarthy prose instantly, just as they'd recognize his speaking voice.
dhx 3 hours ago [-]
How do these changes make sense being included into existing copyright law, as opposed to dedicated personality rights law? What is the original and creative work being copied? Is the idea that someone simply existing and doing mundane everyday activities such as walking their dog down around the park is performing an original and creative work as themselves on a daily basis with a likeness that others cannot derive their own performance of until 70 years after the person's death? If they increase the original and creative nature of their performance by wearing sunglasses with one rectangular pink frame with green lens, and a circular blue frame with yellow lens, and put on a clown wig, does this make their performance of walking a dog around the park creative enough to be copyrightable?
Is a Donald Trump impersonator (example[1]) copying the creative performance of Donald Trump (president)? What if someone did intend to create deepfakes of Donald Trump (president) and instead of using an image or audio of Donald Trump (president) as source material, use the Donald Trump impersonator as the source material?
It sounds like a good idea, but I can imagine the implementation can be quite difficult. If I look exactly like another person, who has the right to decide what I can do with my own image?
Propelloni 6 hours ago [-]
Person A will have the rights to their image, person B to theirs. If person A looks like person B, person B still has no say in what person A does with their image and vice versa. Seems obvious to me.
I guess you worry about stuff like person A looks like celebrity person B and sells their image for, say, frosty frootloop commercials. As long as A is not impersonating B, ie. claiming to be B, I can't see a problem. "Hi, my name is Troy McClure, you may know me for looking like Serena Williams." I guess it will be the decade of the doppelgänger agencies, like in Double Trouble ;) [1]
I imagine both of you would have the power to license out your likeness.
Same situation as today: if you have a lookalike out there who does pornography, and somebody you know runs across it, they'll think it's you and not much you can do about that except explain.
LocalH 6 hours ago [-]
We live under a copyright regime where four notes is enough to be an infringing musical work.
Dollars to doughnuts that this law is used against people not misrepresenting themselves, who happen to look like famous people.
medstrom 3 hours ago [-]
I mean that you wouldn't be able to "infringe" since you are also an owner.
HPsquared 7 hours ago [-]
The same problem applies to regular copyright. Different people will make similar, maybe even identical, works fairly often. So probably a similar solution? Not sure. The wrinkle being you can't exactly change your own features.
ImHereToVote 7 hours ago [-]
Not with that attitude you can't.
HPsquared 6 hours ago [-]
Ironically I could see that idea being used in "hard authoritarian" style: a state could require that people MUST have distinct and uniquely registered faces to allow tracking via facial recognition.
zakki 7 hours ago [-]
There is always outlier (i look like someone) in anything. However this universal approach is a win for the people.
wiseowise 7 hours ago [-]
It works both ways. You’d have to find compromise.
paganel 4 hours ago [-]
The State does. The same State which now has an extra-power over its subjects.
gambiting 6 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, the law is already quite stupid around this.
There have been many cases where a company wanted to hire say, actor X to voice their commercial, actor refused, so they hired someone else with a nearly identical voice, the original actor sued and won(!!!!!) because apparently it's their "signature" voice.
I disagree because obviously that means the other person has no right to make money using their voice now, at no fault of their own?
But yeah I'd imagine you'd have the same problem here - you can't generate a picture of say, Brad Pitt even if you say well actually this isn't Brad Pitt, it's just a person who happens to look exactly like him(which is obviously entirely possible and could happen).
Propelloni 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but those cases hinged on the fact that the ad company tried to hire the actor first, thus demonstrating intent of using this actor. Had they hired Nearly Identical Voice directly they probably would not have lost.
detaro 4 hours ago [-]
These cases generally are not about just someone that happened to sound the same, but someone who was choosen specifically and directed to sound like the imitated person. Even explicitly looking for similarity is generally fine, calls for voice actors will include references to well-known VAs as "the sort of thing we are looking for", only imitation is going to far.
(In music, some other cases have been about suspected misuse of actual recordings, e.g. a cover band being sued because the original musician believes they actually used one of their recordings, and disproving that can be tricky. I don't think that can as easily happen with look-alikes)
RataNova 7 hours ago [-]
Curious how enforceable it'll be in practice though. If the platforms don't play ball or the content is hosted elsewhere, the legal teeth might get dull fast
beardyw 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure I understand how this would work with, say, a photograph of a person. Does the photographer own the copyright, or the photographed?
docdeek 5 hours ago [-]
In France we have a ‘right to the image’ where you have a right to stop someone taking your photo or having a photo of you published. People who contravene the rules can be punished with fines or more.
From Wikipedia: "Public figures can be photographed as part of their function or professional activity... A photograph of a public figure taken as part of his private life therefore still requires explicit authorization for publication. Thus, the Prime Minister cannot oppose a journalist photographing him at the exit of the Council of Ministers or during an official lunch, but he can prohibit the publication of photographs representing him at an event in his private life, such as a family reunion.”
How would this work in the case of, say, identical twins?
zx8080 6 hours ago [-]
Probably, okay until there's some conflict. Then, the lawyers will get paid some money to resolve it.
Win-win. For the lawyers.
lupusreal 5 hours ago [-]
Identical twins look different if you know them well.
senectus1 6 hours ago [-]
co-oprative license?
eesmith 9 hours ago [-]
Is this the sort of copyright where ownership can be sold or transferred? The article didn't explain how this works.
Logiar 7 hours ago [-]
If you sell the copyright, does that mean you can no longer look like yourself?
harvey9 7 hours ago [-]
Non exclusive license? This might be useful to actors if someone generates video of them too.
exiguus 7 hours ago [-]
Usually in Europe, there is no copyleft. Copyright can not be sold. Only the right of use.
eesmith 5 hours ago [-]
My complaint is that the article makes no mention of these details.
Is it a moral right which cannot be transferred? Is there a time limit? Does it expire upon death? If not, who inherits the right?
Or is it more like an economic right, which may be transferred?
Or is the author using "copyright" in a very broad and non-legal sense?
California, for example, has laws concerning the misappropriation of likeness, but these are not copyright laws.
Does the proposed Danish law allow deepfake use by consent, and what counts as consent? If clause §123/43.b of the Microsoft MacGoogleMeta user agreement says "by agreeing to this service you allow us to make and distribute deepfakes" - does that count as consent?
exiguus 4 hours ago [-]
I was also confused by the word copyright. Because when we think about videos and picutures taken in public. Most of the countries have a law that divide, what is public and what is private. You basically own pictures that are took from you by others in private and also in public to a certain state.
My take is, that Denmark wants to implement this not only for visuals (like videos and picture), but also for behaviour.
rusk 7 hours ago [-]
Presumably non fungible …
inglor_cz 5 hours ago [-]
This looks so weird.
There is no creativity involved whatsoever. Plenty of people look similar enough that they share "copyrighted" features. Cartoons of prominent people = copyright infringement? (Europe has a long history of judgments and precedents that prominent people can be parodied etc., how will that square with a fancy copyright protection.) You can principially make money on your copyright, so if a twin "sells" their face rights and the other twin demands a share, then what?
Just make deepfakes a specific crime and do not mess with IP any further. It is already a mess.
senectus1 6 hours ago [-]
interesting idea.. i like it.
question tho, what happens if your features change... so say you have an accident and gain a scar or disfigurment. does that mean that your pre-disfigurement image is no longer copyrighted? or is your image for your whole life and at every stage of your life is copyrighted?
Public photography? does this mean your image cant be sold if take in public? I'm sure there are many other scenarios that would be interesting to argue about as well.
amelius 5 hours ago [-]
Another scenario: what if you wanted to change some features?
Like Arnie wouldn't allow his likeness in the C64 predator game (Which also had backstory not in the movie, blew my mind, games could build on movies and actors had rights to the likeness of a movie character they were)
Does this mean corporation's can't CCTV me like I can't film in a theater?
A lot of problems with this, and the real privacy benefits won't be enforced, we will see what happens.
paganel 4 hours ago [-]
Which, implicitly, also means that the State now has the right to "give" the copy-right to one's own features. Which, implicitly, also means that now the same State has the right to "get back" / retrieve the copy-right to one's own features, after all it was the State that gave it away in the first place. Absolute bleak world.
throw83838484 7 hours ago [-]
So if I look like celebrity, can I sue them for copyright infringement? Or I will get sued back?
Or if I get tattoo wit logo, is that "my own feature" and now I have copyright?!
This is like giving copyright to a name, there will be collisions and conflicts.
superfrank 7 hours ago [-]
You're taking a very ethnocentric view towards this. Most European cultures don't have the same legal culture that the US has.
Punitive damages are very rare or non-existent depending on the country and the loser of the case usually has to pay the winning party's legal fees. There just isn't the incentive to sue someone over something silly like what you've mentioned.
LocalH 6 hours ago [-]
Do you trust big business and the increasingly authoritarian nature of modern politics not to abuse the law as far as they can?
I sure as hell don't.
riffraff 7 hours ago [-]
That is how every law works. There's people specialized in handling collisions and conflicts.
It's also why the idea that "code is law" popular in certain circles was always misguided.
RataNova 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think the law's aiming to copyright your existence like a trademark, but more to stop people from digitally cloning you without consent
visarga 5 hours ago [-]
That has nothing to do with promoting progress and creativity, and all to do with privacy. Remember that photographs of people already have copyright protection. Why did they lump a privacy law into copyright? It's already dysfunctional as it is.
We moved past content scarcity decades ago and we are squarely in the attention scarcity regime. We use copyright against itself to have open source. We prefer interactivity and collaboration, as in open source, social networks or online games. Copyright stands in the path of collaboration and interaction.
Will companies now need to license "the likeness" of people too? Will "likeness" be property to be sold or rented?
- either the famous person cannot use their look if a lookalike refuses to agree
- or they have to pay all lookalikes to use their own image
- or the lookalikes get less protection under this law
- a person might lose their look-rights if they change their appearance to look like someone else
- someone who wants to go into acting might not get hired if they look too much like a famous actor
pwdisswordfishz 5 hours ago [-]
I don't know how to tell you this, but Denmark is a sovereign state and does not derive its interpretation and objectives of copyright from the US constitution.
chrisjj 5 hours ago [-]
> Will companies now need to license "the likeness" of people too?
You keep saying what "we" prefer, but I wasn't aware that everyone shared the same values around privacy. Some cultures take it much more seriously than others, often in ways you wouldn't expect if you're coming from e.g. the US.
Rendered at 13:51:32 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Otherwise everyday photography in public spaces would become legally risky or impractical, especially in crowded areas where avoiding all faces is nearly impossible and where the focus clearly isn't on the individuals but the landmark or scene itself.
If a deepfake is made of someone, that person was clearly the subject of the image/video and thus violates his/her privacy. This extra legislation would help protect in case the original image/video was taken with consent (so no privacy issue).
There's one photographer, François Brunelle, who has a project where he takes pictures of doppelgängers: http://www.francoisbrunelle.com/webn/e-project.html
Some more examples
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/10/14/francois-brunelle...
https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/1cimhns/canadian_...
AFAIK, copyright allows for independent creation (unlike patents), so unless one person had deliberately copied the other's appearance, there should be no problem.
I was just recently trying to find an associate from my past with an unfortunately common whole full name in his language and was rather surprised at how many of the people depicted online with his name looked extremely similar to him, but upon closer discernment were surely not him. How do you discern that a “deepfake” (what a dumb term) is similar to you and not just similar to anyone else?
Also, what if AI is just trained with images of you? The consequent image will similarly only be an inspiration of you, not you, not the same as even using images in an attempt to graft a very similar facial feature onto an image or map it into a video.
It is in fact also what artists do in physical medium, they look at something/someone and are inspired by it to create an illusion that gives the impression of similarity, but it is not that thing/person. Will this new law possibly make art illegal too because people have not thought this through?
On a digital screen, it is of course also not you at all, it is individual pixels that fool the mind or give an illusion. It is really a pernicious muddling of reality and logic we have allowed to emerge, where the impression of depiction is the property of someone even though it is not that person, but also only if it is the means for control, ie money. Mere peasants have no control over their image taken in public.
The Sphere in Vegas is another good example of this on a large scale, each “pixel” is roughly 6” apart from the other and about 2” in diameter, for all intents and purposes separate objects, each only projecting one array of colors in a matrix of individual LEDs. Up close it looks no different than a colored LED matrix, only when you stand sufficiently far away is your mind tricked into believing you see something that is not really there.
Frankly, these moves to “protect” are very much a direct assault on free expression and even may create unintended consequences if art exceptions do not apply anymore either. Is it now illegal for me to paint a nude, how about from an image that I took of someone? What about if I do it really well from my own memory? What about if I use a modeling tool to recreate such a nude as a digital 3D object from images or even memory? Is AI not also simply a tool? Or is it more?
Presumably the only reason to use a deepfake of a specific person is to produce things specifically in relation to that person. Otherwise, why bother? So “is this about the individual or just coincidence?” isn’t likely to be a factor in any complaint made. This seems like a hypothetical rather than something that is likely to need answering in practice.
You presume both too much and not enough.
How are you going to do that unless it actually looks like you?
Then we see how they’re doing and decide - hey let’s not be like them.
Imagine I drew a Coca Cola logo in paint. Now I own the copyright to my picture of the Coca Cola logo. Next I stick it on my new brand of soda. That’s not allowed.
Coca-cola own rights to their logo. You should own rights to your face and voice.
I think your conclusion is correct, but the child comments mentioning fair use would not apply because fair use is a copyright concept, not a trademark concept. And I'm really only familiar with US laws, so I'm not even sure if fair use is a concept in Denmark or not. They have a different notion of copyright than we do in the US.
That said, I think Denmark did the wrong thing here. I think face and identity is much closer to a trademark than it is to something that is a created piece of artwork. Trademark law is a little bit narrower because it allows you to use the trademark to refer to the company, but it prohibits you from using the trademark to confuse customers about whether this is an authentic product. This feels quite analogous to the issue that Denmark is trying to address with the deep fakes, so I'm a little bit surprised on the copyright angle, since I can imagine a lot of legitimate uses for taking a picture of someone without needing their permission and distributing it. CCTVs, traffic cams, mug shots, police body cams, and the ever-increasing trend of recording in any situation that becomes tense or dangerous. Will a civilian be told by the cop that he's violating copyright because they want to film the interaction with the police? This reminds me of when cops would play Taylor Swift loudly in the background so that people couldn't post videos of the interaction on YouTube.
Let's say, as an example, a married politician having an affair with someone. Generally, news sites will publish photos with the face of the politician visible but would blur the other person. The former is clearly a person of public interest, the latter is not. Even if it's a photo taken in a public space.
The issue of money gatekeeping legal rights is another issue entirely which should be addressed for everything, not just this specific problem. It's also, in my opinion, a lot more prevalent in the US than the rest of the first world countries.
Then, when someone uses their face to promote something, someone else can repeat the face with what it promotes.
So I think the whole thing actually works in this particular case.
What specific behaviors does this forbid that weren't already forbidden?
But me (not really) on my website (I don't have one) where I trash politicians (I don't) and post a photo of said politician eating poop, that should be 'frowned upon'. (Or worse to shame an ex-gf or a colleague that 'won't yield to my sexual advances').
While reading the article though, I thought of the cases where a paparazzo takes a photo of CelebrityA, then the CelebrityA posts said photo to her Insta (without getting permission from the agency) and the agency sues her. Now (in Denmark) the CelebrityA can sue the paparazzo for taking her photo in the first place (right?). This would protect people from getting uncomfortable photos.
What we'll probably see is, celebrity look-alikes will be contacted to license out their own "features".
Andy Warhol drew images of Campbell's soup cans in paint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans
He controlled the copyright to that painting. That's transformative, and the result does not meaningfully affect Campbell's ability to trade.
Quoting that Wikipedia link: "Although Campbell's never pursued litigation against Warhol for his art, United States Supreme Court justices have stated that it is likely Warhol would have prevailed.", with two quotes from two Supreme Court cases.
The second such quote is from Neil Gorsuch: "Campbell's Soup seems to me an easy case because the purpose of the use for Andy Warhol was not to sell tomato soup in the supermarket...It was to induce a reaction from a viewer in a museum or in other settings."
On the other hand, were Warhol to stick his copyrighted images on a new brand of soup, that would violate trademark law as it would confuse buyers.
While in the West people have no respect to other people, and don't bother to blur anything. I think it would be better for everyone if you couldn't post photos of other people without their permission and if annoying Youtubers would go to jail.
Also when talking about some celebrity on TV they often show a drawing if they could not obtain rights to a photo.
Am I missing something or is this just plain racism? There are lots of japanese people who don't look japanese, foreigners who are permanent residents, and japanese-looking people that aren't japanese - how is it respectful to protect just a certain ethnic groups privacy?
Business don't exist to respect or care about people they exist to generate profit so the idea of a business "respecting" something is not even realistic.
The law is what outlines what are the limits and guarantees the basics rights to everyone.
Big overgeneralization. Here in Germany the "Recht am Eigenen Bild" (literally right to your own image) has existed for decades, and similar to Japan publishing images of others has some pretty big limitations and without consent is usually restricted to places or persons of public interest. To the chagrin of Google Street view or Twitch streamers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
Every burglars wet dream. I have no idea what crime is like in Japan but in EU this is not an option.
"If, for example, you use a continuous recording of the road in which other vehicles' license plates are visible to defend yourself against a traffic ticket, you could be violating data protection, a serious offense that could be punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 euros."
https://www.race.es/camara-para-coche
https://rinckerlaw.com/name-image-and-likeness-how-to-protec...
But Jakob Engel-Schmidt has been talking about this in the Danish news since April/May, back when two opposing political parties created a computer-generated fake video depicting Mette Frederiksen saying things that would have outraged voters.
(I'm talking philosophically by the way, not legally)
For someone like Cormac McCarthy, whose sparse punctuation, biblical cadences, and apocalyptic imagery create an unmistakable "voice," the argument seems strong. His style is as identifiable as vocal timbre e.g. readers recognize McCarthy prose instantly, just as they'd recognize his speaking voice.
Is a Donald Trump impersonator (example[1]) copying the creative performance of Donald Trump (president)? What if someone did intend to create deepfakes of Donald Trump (president) and instead of using an image or audio of Donald Trump (president) as source material, use the Donald Trump impersonator as the source material?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2tWDJmdXH8
I guess you worry about stuff like person A looks like celebrity person B and sells their image for, say, frosty frootloop commercials. As long as A is not impersonating B, ie. claiming to be B, I can't see a problem. "Hi, my name is Troy McClure, you may know me for looking like Serena Williams." I guess it will be the decade of the doppelgänger agencies, like in Double Trouble ;) [1]
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087481/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_8...
Same situation as today: if you have a lookalike out there who does pornography, and somebody you know runs across it, they'll think it's you and not much you can do about that except explain.
Dollars to doughnuts that this law is used against people not misrepresenting themselves, who happen to look like famous people.
There have been many cases where a company wanted to hire say, actor X to voice their commercial, actor refused, so they hired someone else with a nearly identical voice, the original actor sued and won(!!!!!) because apparently it's their "signature" voice.
I disagree because obviously that means the other person has no right to make money using their voice now, at no fault of their own?
But yeah I'd imagine you'd have the same problem here - you can't generate a picture of say, Brad Pitt even if you say well actually this isn't Brad Pitt, it's just a person who happens to look exactly like him(which is obviously entirely possible and could happen).
(In music, some other cases have been about suspected misuse of actual recordings, e.g. a cover band being sued because the original musician believes they actually used one of their recordings, and disproving that can be tricky. I don't think that can as easily happen with look-alikes)
From Wikipedia: "Public figures can be photographed as part of their function or professional activity... A photograph of a public figure taken as part of his private life therefore still requires explicit authorization for publication. Thus, the Prime Minister cannot oppose a journalist photographing him at the exit of the Council of Ministers or during an official lunch, but he can prohibit the publication of photographs representing him at an event in his private life, such as a family reunion.”
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_à_l%27image_des_personne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama
Win-win. For the lawyers.
Is it a moral right which cannot be transferred? Is there a time limit? Does it expire upon death? If not, who inherits the right?
Or is it more like an economic right, which may be transferred?
Or is the author using "copyright" in a very broad and non-legal sense?
California, for example, has laws concerning the misappropriation of likeness, but these are not copyright laws.
Does the proposed Danish law allow deepfake use by consent, and what counts as consent? If clause §123/43.b of the Microsoft MacGoogleMeta user agreement says "by agreeing to this service you allow us to make and distribute deepfakes" - does that count as consent?
There is no creativity involved whatsoever. Plenty of people look similar enough that they share "copyrighted" features. Cartoons of prominent people = copyright infringement? (Europe has a long history of judgments and precedents that prominent people can be parodied etc., how will that square with a fancy copyright protection.) You can principially make money on your copyright, so if a twin "sells" their face rights and the other twin demands a share, then what?
Just make deepfakes a specific crime and do not mess with IP any further. It is already a mess.
Public photography? does this mean your image cant be sold if take in public? I'm sure there are many other scenarios that would be interesting to argue about as well.
Like Arnie wouldn't allow his likeness in the C64 predator game (Which also had backstory not in the movie, blew my mind, games could build on movies and actors had rights to the likeness of a movie character they were)
Does this mean corporation's can't CCTV me like I can't film in a theater?
A lot of problems with this, and the real privacy benefits won't be enforced, we will see what happens.
Or if I get tattoo wit logo, is that "my own feature" and now I have copyright?!
This is like giving copyright to a name, there will be collisions and conflicts.
Punitive damages are very rare or non-existent depending on the country and the loser of the case usually has to pay the winning party's legal fees. There just isn't the incentive to sue someone over something silly like what you've mentioned.
I sure as hell don't.
It's also why the idea that "code is law" popular in certain circles was always misguided.
We moved past content scarcity decades ago and we are squarely in the attention scarcity regime. We use copyright against itself to have open source. We prefer interactivity and collaboration, as in open source, social networks or online games. Copyright stands in the path of collaboration and interaction.
Will companies now need to license "the likeness" of people too? Will "likeness" be property to be sold or rented?
- either the famous person cannot use their look if a lookalike refuses to agree
- or they have to pay all lookalikes to use their own image
- or the lookalikes get less protection under this law
- a person might lose their look-rights if they change their appearance to look like someone else
- someone who wants to go into acting might not get hired if they look too much like a famous actor
They already do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights