Normally when a government extends a piece of copyright law we expect it to be in the favour of commercial interests with deep pockets and little care for their consumers. But in Denmark they do things differently it seems, which is why they are giving Danes the copyright over their own features such as their faces or voices. Why? To combat deepfakes, meaning that if you deepfake a Dane, they can come after you for big bucks, or indeed kronor. It’s a major win, in privacy terms.
You might of course ask, whether it’s now risky to photograph a Dane. We are not of course lawyers here but like any journalists we have to possess a knowledge of how copyright works, and we are guessing that the idea in play here is that of passing off. If you take a photograph of a Volkswagen you will have captured the VW logo on its front, but the car company will not sue you because you are not passing off something that’s not a Volkswagen as the real thing. So it will be with Danes; if you take a picture of their now-copyrighted face in a crowd you are not passing it off as anything but a real picture of them, so we think you should be safe.
We welcome this move, and wish other countries would follow suit.
Pope Francis, Midjourney, Public domain, (Which is a copyright story all of its own!)
I suspect this is going to create a lot of legal grey area that will burden courts quite a lot. No your honor I didn’t intentionally create a look alike of that guy can’t you tell it’s really obvious it’s not him look how droopy the face is here. Can’t you hear the pitch change in the voice here, clearly that was intended to tip off that this was meant to be a criticism of the individual and not me trying to pass off as them.
Also see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-alike
and “doppelganger” (How did that word ever get into English?)
And does this extend to TV shows such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image
Here in the Netherlands we’ve also got some laws around privacy and use of your portrait, but it also has limitations for “well known persons”. When you are becoming famous, you loose a part of your privacy.
English is known as the magnificent bastard Ba$+@rd tongue, it has a long history of borrowing from various languages.
French: cul de sac (bottom of a sack) – English: dead end, or closed at one end.
Déjà vu, Cliché, Café, Bon Voyage
Irish: smidiríní (crumbs) – English(smithereens): little bits, small fragments.
galore, brogue, slogan, whiskey
…
German: kindergarten, angst, zeitgeist, schadenfreude, …
India: loot, pyjamas, shampoo, thug, chutney, juggernaut, cashmere, punch, veranda, bandana, bangle, cot, dinghy, dungarees, khaki
And the lists goes on and on and on, you start to wonder what words were not from other languages.
The anglo-saxons are called that because the germanic Saxons conquered and settled in Britain, and so the English language that grew in Britain is suppose to be non-local really :)
And only a small bit of the population is local, the welsh I think? But even there the vikings (and saxons obv.) spread their DNA all over the population AFAIK.
I would also like to add “cummerbund” and “catamaran” were also borrowed from India. :-)
Or even the other way around:
“Clearly your honor that’s a fake image of me, I don’t have red eyes from drug use, that was added to disparage me. That ‘companion’ I’m walking with was photoshopped to harm my image, of course I didn’t do that.
They should give more credit to the parents…
Over here we either get a persons permission to appear in a video/picture, otherwise attempt to crop them out or worst case blur their face.
Is the blurring a “misrepresentation of their likeness” now? I can only assume we still need permission to use their likeness in the first place (ie unblurred)
The thought of someone demanding money regardless if their face appears there or not is going to need handled very carefully as to not destroy public photography.
Im all for destroying public photography. Now there is an “artistic”{ use for AI I can get behind. Smart Cameras that AI filter out any individual whose cell phone is not broadcasting a “free to photograph license” permission.
Yeah thats right, I want it to be an OPT IN, not an opt out. Privacy should be the default setting, EVEN in public.
Inward facing security cameras, TOS of entry permits recording. External security cameras, footage can only be recorded for security purposes and can only be released to insurance companies and law enforcement.
You’d basically require a police state to enforce this in a world where everyone has a camera in their pocket. That obviously wouldn’t be better.
But fortunately fir you there is a viable alternative. Just stay out of public spaces. Something tells me you won’t be missed.
Look around kiddo, we already live in a police state. An increasing number of cities are using massive networks of public cameras with facial recognition to track and trace people daily. Automate plate readers are being used to not only track vehicles movements but also to infer associations between people. You cant shed a cell without law enforcement being able to establish your identity because your third cousin twice removed did a genealogy test for shits and giggles.
True privacy is dead.
What I originally proposed wouldnt require any advance to the police state. It would just require a mandatory firmware update to create a small sense of illusory privacy to our dystopic lives.
Get yourself a hat with a bunch of bright IR and UV lights in the brim.
Get a similar license plate frame.
Not perfect.
No, what you propose is just another cudgel for incipient police states worldwide.
Just a bad idea.
It’s not time to seriously sabotage the cameras, yet.
Bright green lasers do them a treat.
Cameras pointed back at the MFers is the only answer, that and LEDs.
It’s already happening daily.
‘They’ tell us ‘mostly peaceful’, but private vid tells truth.
‘They’ tell us ‘insurrection’ but subpoenaed vid shows guided tour.
‘They’ tell us ‘killed while resisting’ but doorbell vid puts cops in federal prison.
We’re at well over 100 cops in prison based on private vids, thousands with new honest jobs guarding empty malls.
Cops will say ‘former cops’, like we don’t know how that works, commies and Scotsman.
Truth, we’re in much better shape than much of Europe.
The UK regularly jails people for wrong speech on social media.
Their (EU states in general) government simply controls too much of their ecomonys (cute little things that they are).
Plus we’re armed to the teeth, which is always nice.
Gives us a fallback currency, 223 coin.
They don’t give all of the details, but the Guardian story both mentions that the proposed change “defines deepfakes…”, and also says, ‘It will also cover “realistic, digitally generated imitations” of an artist’s performance without consent.’
Basically, it sounds a lot more targeted than the broad-strokes changes a few people here seem to be assuming. There can as always be complications to any new law, but not every slope is a greased chute.
“Sounds like” is the definition of “vague”. How broadly the law will be interpreted will be determined by the courts. People will push it as far as they can. Given the stated purpose of the law, “broad strokes” seems the most likely outcome.
The part about the first identical twin to leave the birth canal being entitled to ongoing royalties from the second one is, admittedly, slightly controversial.
At one time, Volkswagen threatened to sue individuals and clubs that posted photos of their cars with the VW logo visible.
I have a feeling that wouldn’t fly in the US. It’s not a misuse of the logo – it’s on their car.
Tell that to deadmau5. Or b is for build. I’m still mad over that last one.
You seem to have confused copyright with trademark.
Reminds me of a study done by MIT about the ‘hipster effect’, and why people that claiming to be non-conformists of society all end up looking the same. Some hipster thought that MIT used his picture without asking and got angry about it. Turns out they used a picture of someone else, they just looked exactly the same in the pictures, wearing the exact same outfit and exact same hair, proving the point of the study.
I immediately think of the time a guy sued because an article about how all hipsters look alike used his photo without his consent.
Except it turned out the photo wasn’t of him.
It is fortunate Danes aren’t known for jumping into lawsuits.
Clueless. They’re not going after satire or parody, they’ll only be targeting misinformation. But of course, one man’s parody is another man’s misinformation. This will be so easily abused that it’s basically just another attack on freedom of speech.
I would’ve thought the equivalent of this law already existed in most places, apparently not? It doesn’t seem like particularly new or novel legislation, maybe it just needs the proper precedent applying to genAI
I don’t know, but seems to me like the big cheeses are fighting AI any way they get to…
And I simply don’t trust government for anything.
Usually, if they say it’s bad, it tends to be good.
Huh. I was expecting a personal airbag demo.
There is nothing like a Dane 🎶
“meaning that if you deepfake a Dane, they can come after you for big bucks”
Assuming you are in Danish jurisdiction of course..
Youtube, FB etc showing in DK must follow DK law.
Eds should speak for themselves.
This is not a reasonable copyright extension.
You are not unique.
You are not a unique snowflake.
There are many others that are not only as ugly as you, but ugly in the same ways.
The only people that will be able to afford this are celebrities and richers, mostly the first.
Woe onto you if some celebrity looks a bit like you and decides to get your haircut.
Expect restraining orders and contempt of court if you don’t change your cut, and you’ll be paying his/her legal costs.
Thank dog it’s happening in an irrelevant nation.
What are they going to do, throw herring at us?
Celebrities have already Trademarked their images.
Even dead ones, perhaps especially dead ones, more profit that way…
the identical twins case is interesting 🤔
Call me cynical, but this feels like more of a cop out that shifts the burden of defense onto the individual rather than simply making it illegal to make a deep fake of a Danish citizen.
It also comes with all the extra copyright garbage too.
This is a good intention shifted so far in the wrong direction that it is barely useful, yet still damaging.