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Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features

109 points by tfourb

by Quarondeau

2 subcomments

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.

by TrackerFF

5 subcomments

I wonder how that works for very similar looking people.
There's one photographer, François Brunelle, who has a project where he takes pictures of doppelgängers: http://www.francoisbrunelle.com/webn/e-project.html

by sjducb

4 subcomments

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.

by codedokode

4 subcomments

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.

by JdeBP

0 subcomment

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.

by aitchnyu

1 subcomments

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.

by Papazsazsa

0 subcomment

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.

by dhx

0 subcomment

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?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2tWDJmdXH8

by pu_pe

7 subcomments

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?

by RataNova

0 subcomment

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

by beardyw

2 subcomments

Not sure I understand how this would work with, say, a photograph of a person. Does the photographer own the copyright, or the photographed?

by cheald

3 subcomments

How would this work in the case of, say, identical twins?

by eesmith

3 subcomments

Is this the sort of copyright where ownership can be sold or transferred? The article didn't explain how this works.

by inglor_cz

0 subcomment

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.

by senectus1

1 subcomments

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.

by enoeht

0 subcomment

with or without Mustache?

by aaron695

0 subcomment

You already have the idea of personality rights - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
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.

by paganel

0 subcomment

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.

by throw83838484

3 subcomments

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.

by visarga

3 subcomments

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