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So I decided to punish myself this morning by reading this article(yes, it's the Grauniad; its sentiment is not isolated to that publication), and I swear I spent the entire article looking like Confused Jackie Chan. Just, disbelief that these are real people saying actual things that they actually believe.

It's just endless, rampant Ludditry lathered atop your more typical everyday artistic snobbery. Holograms of dead artists are "ghost slavery", Tarkin's appearance in Rogue One is a "digital indignity", hologram based performances are "un-live" and unworthy of existence because they don't allow you to breathe the same air as your idol(nevermind that this dumbass sentiment directly contradicts the earlier portion of the article where they talk about the "troubling" aspects of celebrity). Oh, and of course, the usual snivelling "nyeeeeh, but this devalues my experience of really seeing the band live! No faaaaaaaair!" garbage spouted by people who can only find enjoyment in experiences that are denied to others. And then, this gem:

Reynolds imagines the unscrupulous use of technology to capture and replicate performers’ vocal timbre and bodily mannerisms. “You would get a sort of digi-simulacrum of the artist singing new songs, guesting as vocalist or rapper on other people’s records, or appearing in videos or movies,” he says. “In the recording studio, you’d just need the software which would generate the voice.”

Firstly, "unscrupulous", lol. As if any of this would be happening without explicit quadruple-authorised(and well compensated) permission for whoever owns the "rights". Secondly - this sounds brilliant, at least to me, but more importantly, it also sounds like an inevitable side-effect of that kind of technology being available in a more general, non-specific sense. And frankly, if giving indie filmmakers and game developers the voice acting equivalent of the virtual orchestra comes at the cost of "devaluing the legacy" of a few overpaid and, importantly, dead preening artistes - I barely consider that a price, but it's certainly worth paying.

In fact, I'd go further. I'd establish specific rules about this kind of thing - the deceased can insist in their will that their likeness(visual or audio) is not used in any capacity for any reason for up to 20 years after their death, not a day more. Immediate family members(ie, parents and children) of the deceased artist can insist that the likeness cannot be used for a maximum of 30 years, regardless of the provisions in the will of the deceased. After that? In the context of any given performance, the rights to the likeness are basically public domain, ie, if you have the rights to the character of Tarkin and that maximum of 30 years have passed(or sooner, if the above terms allow), then you also have the right to use the appearance and vocal pattern of the actor that played the character.

The artist gets to protect their children during their grief. Their immediate family can push it a little further if they still feel they need more time to come to terms with the idea. But ultimately, the appearance and vocal performance of a dead actor or singer or whatever is placed in the only rational context - tools for the next generation of artists and creators. Because if the idea of a hologram Elvis performing a duet with some modern singer is so horrifying, why isn't the idea of someone sampling an Elvis song as part of a remix also horrifying? Both would be, by the standards of the warbling buffoons in that article, "ghost slavery".

The ludicrous overreach of the concept of "intellectual property" has gone far enough.

Hologram presentations of deceased artists who cannot consent and whose agency is completely removed IS exploitative and IS immoral.

nfe wrote:
Hologram presentations of deceased artists who cannot consent and whose agency is completely removed IS exploitative and IS immoral.

How is it any different to playing a recorded performance on a screen?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

nfe wrote:
Hologram presentations of deceased artists who cannot consent and whose agency is completely removed IS exploitative and IS immoral.

How is it any different to playing a recorded performance on a screen?

Consent. Consent is always the issue.

Who knows whether Peter Cushing would agree to appear in a new Star Wars film? Maybe Freddie Mercury wouldn't agree to a performance in X location or with X guest stars?

It is fundamentally different to being filmed and selling the rights to distribute that recording at a later date - especially in cases where new performances are being artificially generated.

A Recorded performance is one thing - we see the dead all the time and hear them too. Both in our homes and on the big screen. We socially have on problem with past performances being preserved to enjoy over and over again.


I think the difference is when you're creating new works from scratch with total voice and animation emulation. You're now not enjoying a past performance, but enjoying something "new" by someone who is no longer alive. Marketing wise its fantastic, it lets companies get around the annoying element of their biggest names being dead.
They imght even argue that it sort of happens already, we have loads of Elivs Impersonators performing the world over.


However they are still copy-catting the old performances not anything new.



Personally I think my issue is not just that its somewhat uncouth; but also that it would mean a major star can keep being a major star for a very long time. This creates a barrier against entry for new names because why would a music company invest in a new name when they've already got 10 BIG names who they can keep making music for decades to come. Why invest in the next Elivs when Elivs cannot die.






That said Tolkien is still writing books from the grave and its in no way overshadowed more modern authors. Then again he had copious notes to write from and many of his works were not so much stories as in depth lore so they are ont quite the same market. Thoguh he does seem to dominate the "gets a new hardback with artwork inside it" market for fantasy.

The point being clumsily made is that often the person who owns a copyrightable thing is not the person or persons who actually created it. Consent from a creator is not necessary; consent from the rights-holder (who may or may not be the creator) is.

Using Tupac's image as a hologram is philosophically, ethically and legally no different than GW using Tolkien's IP to make a boardgame.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

Using Tupac's image as a hologram is philosophically, ethically and legally no different than GW using Tolkien's IP to make a boardgame.

Legally yes, ethically no, philosophically... highly debateable.

In reality it's probably not quite the same legally either, but I know what you mean.

You're drawing a distinction without highlighting a difference.

In both cases IP is being used without the express consent of the deceased creator; in both cases it has been authorized by the person(s) who now have legal control over the IP.

Why tolerate one but not the other?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
You're drawing a distinction without highlighting a difference.

I know, I'm being flippant.

In both cases IP is being used without the express consent of the deceased creator; in both cases it has been authorized by the person(s) who now have legal control over the IP.

Why tolerate one but not the other?

In one case the individual themselves is the product in a situation that they could not consent to. In the other a new piece of art is being situated within, or developed from, art that they created.

Making a LOTR game is comparable to sampling a Prince performance, but not to making Prince himself appear onstage 'live' with people he may have objected to performing with. IT's wholly uncomparable, I think, to giving Prince lines and creating a CGI version of him to act in Purple Rain 2.

A couple record companies own songs I've written and some images of me. I granted them those rights freely (mostly, there's a power relationship, obviously) and they are free to allow The British National Party to use them at their conference. They're not free to make me perform them at a British National Party conference and they should not be able to gain that right just because I die.

They wouldn't gain that right just because you die. They probably already have that right. They can't force you bodily, of course, but they could, at least in theory, use your image alongside your music. It's down to the wording of whatever document you signed.

Which is the point, really. If you're worried about use of your works/image in a manner inconsistent with your personal ideology then you need to negotiate a tighter contract; one that bars such use. You need to include conditions on how your estate deals with those rights. For sure there's an inequality of arms involved when dealing with a 800lb gorilla record company, but those documents are not contracts of adhesion, either.

I happen to agree with you on the ethics of the thing; IP law in general is little more than a swamp littered with the corpses of content-creators who have been bled dry by grasping, sucking corporate overlords, but subjective ethics (as they must necessarily be) is not a stable basis for debate.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
They wouldn't gain that right just because you die. They probably already have that right. They can't force you bodily, of course, but they could, at least in theory, use your image alongside your music. It's down to the wording of whatever document you signed.

You know, I was gonna go back and edit my post slightly to take the edge of having a legal right to do something and putting the weight on the moral authority to do so in that last sentence but I thought the inplication was clear. Just shoulda done it.

In any case, it is not fair to expect people to have preemptively grant themselves safety from types of exploitation in contracts signed prior to the existence of that exploitation, in some cases by many decades.

Life isn't fair. If it was, things like Baldrick wouldn't happen. Ahem. If it was, you wouldn't need a contract at all.

Again, 'moral authority' or whatever term you want to use for ethics is necessarily subjective and an argument based on it is doomed to become circular and based on little more than naked assertions from both sides. Law provides the only objective bedrock.

I agree that the ethics here are shady, my point is that the ethics of IP law are (IMO) necessarily shady and it's not raised as an objection (much) against things like the LotR tabletop game, an adaptation of Tolkien's work that has just as little permission from the creator to exist as does a hologram of Tupac.

There is a mechanism to address your concerns, throwing your hands in the air and saying that it's not fair to expect you to take steps to protect yourself in these circumstances - against a potential-mischief you're already alive to - doesn't wash. Barring a material misrepresentation, ignorance of a contractual term is not a ground to rescind it or to void its operation, nor should it be.

In the US, the dead cannot consent to the release of their private information. It's common for news agencies to get FBI files, army records, medical records, etc. on someone once they are deceased. These are expressions of who someone is the same as any image.

You can't take it with you. Consent stops being relevant the moment you cease to be, corpses don't have agency.

If there is an argument against the use of someone's likeness posthumously, it's not a moral one. Some entertainers have estates that license the use of their likeness for various purposes. But the estate is a legal entity, it still exists, and its executors are capable of making choices.

The dead are not. Pretending the dead have a right to choose seems to deny the fact they cannot choose, they reached a terminal point and ceased to be. It's like saying I have a right to live forever. That right is meaningless because there's no means to exercise it.

Thinking about that quote from the Odyssey, where Achilles told Odysseus it's better to be a slave on the Earth than the King of the Dead. Who's to say an entertainer would not want to be remembered after their death?

Let's pretend agency applied to the dead, maybe someone dies with some proclamation against ever using their image. Then a little time goes by, and that deceased celebrity starts to be forgotten. What happens when the situation changes and the dead celebrity changes their mind and wants to be remembered through the creative expressions of others?

You don't have agency when you can't change your mind. The dead can't change their mind. Thus, agency does not apply.

 techsoldaten wrote:
In the US, the dead cannot consent to the release of their private information. It's common for news agencies to get FBI files, army records, medical records, etc. on someone once they are deceased. These are expressions of who someone is the same as any image.

You can't take it with you. Consent stops being relevant the moment you cease to be, corpses don't have agency.

If there is an argument against the use of someone's likeness posthumously, it's not a moral one. Some entertainers have estates that license the use of their likeness for various purposes. But the estate is a legal entity, it still exists, and its executors are capable of making choices.

The dead are not. Pretending the dead have a right to choose seems to deny the fact they cannot choose, they reached a terminal point and ceased to be. It's like saying I have a right to live forever. That right is meaningless because there's no means to exercise it.

Thinking about that quote from the Odyssey, where Achilles told Odysseus it's better to be a slave on the Earth than the King of the Dead. Who's to say an entertainer would not want to be remembered after their death?

Let's pretend agency applied to the dead, maybe someone dies with some proclamation against ever using their image. Then a little time goes by, and that deceased celebrity starts to be forgotten. What happens when the situation changes and the dead celebrity changes their mind and wants to be remembered through the creative expressions of others?

You don't have agency when you can't change your mind. The dead can't change their mind. Thus, agency does not apply.

Well put.

There's also the implications of this kind of nonsense argument - OK, lets accept for a moment the premise that it's somehow morally wrong to use an artist's vocal or physical likeness outside of a context they could envision when they were alive and capable of giving consent to, and further lets accept for a moment that the law should reflect that.

So, artists who's music was recorded prior to radio shouldn't be broadcast, right? It should only ever be available as vinyl recordings, since that was the only way they could have conceived of their works being used after their death, and they might have objected to the idea of their disembodied voice being beamed around the globe and out into space.

And of course, the works of composers who lived before there was any method of recording music other than writing out musical notation on paper should only ever be performed by live orchestras playing from such a paper record, right? After all, there's no way we can know whether or not they would have consented to having their work laid down on a physical disc that could be played back in people's living rooms. Like the live music snobs in the article above, they might well have felt that was a degradation of their works, that they were meant to be played and listened to live, so we shouldn't have the ability to just assume their consent, and so it shouldn't be legal to record or transmit their music in any way.

Yeah, nonsense.

Techsoldaten is correct. I've had this come up in my own line of work (records and archives), particularly in the case of publishing materials of dead people (particularly personal journals. In one case, a man's personal journal outed himself (and others). I objected on the basis that it's a fairly crappy thing to do to anyone, and was told flatly "the dead have no rights."

And in general, that's a reasonable stance to take, as wills and testaments would end up being nightmarish binds on society for a ridiculously long time. There are specific situations where the dead's lack of rights can do harm to the living (who do need to be protected- say kids of someone with unpopular politics, or publizing the dead person's 'blackmail book'), but in general the protection the living doesn't apply.

As for dead actors/musicians.... Nope. Sorry. Don't care. It isn't any different than replaying a film or a song. The studio has rights to those performances and can do whatever with them. That's how those agreements work.

It's interesting that people are only considering the ramifications of musicians/actors being used posthumously in futuristic holodecks or VR sims in a, shall we say, "normal" capacity. We all know what holodecks will REALLY be used for. So, consider the idea of what it might mean morally/ethically to be really swinging with Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack.

Well, it's something else to be outraged about so why not? Remember a time when some things just were, without being questioned and interrogated for social and moral outrage? I remember.

Both inside and outside the U.S., the deceased have ways to influence and control their property, and to consent to the disposal of or treatment of same.

What is a Will? What is estate planning?

As a matter of strict logic, no deceased person can give 'consent' as that term is used by a layperson, what with being dead and all. Jurisdiction of eternal rest is irrelevant.

EDIT - Also, it's worth noting that two of the tree things techsoldaten lists are in fact public documents, freely accessible to anyone at any time. I have a really, really hard time believing that medical records are just handed out, even in the U.S. That is certainly not how it works in either the U.K. or in Canada, where you need an authorization and direction from the executor of the estate to acquire such things.

And even then they tend to fight you. I've had to attend numerous motions seeking an Order compelling OHIP to release documents in only three years of experience in law, without actually being a lawyer yet.

I suspect this is likely to be a moot point.

Once CGI and simulation reach the point that you can fully replicate a human being, why would anyone bother replicating a real human being?

Just make an idol from scratch to perfectly match your needs.

Debating this issue is about as pointless as debating how we're going to get back manufacturing jobs. The future is going to kill the debate by rendering it's basic assumptions irrelevant.

EDIT: Also Futurama as prophecy, how bout that?

Here's an easier way to think about this issue.

Have some sympathy for those who see this as a moral issue. Performing artists have the ability to excite and inspire. Wanting to control how their works are used is natural, they want it used for the 'right reasons.'

In our lifetimes, it will be possible to create photorealistic representations of anyone using something akin to a personal computer. They will seem genuine and authentic, capable of expressing the very qualities that made someone special in the first place. In some cases, these representations will be better than the real thing, and they may eventually be expressed in physical form (i.e. androids.)

No one would want a representation of themselves shilling for some product, service or cause they find abhorrent. Nor would they want someone building high-end sexbots in their likeness that exist solely for gratification. I get it and see why some people would look at this as right and wrong.

However... this culture we all live in, where information is freely shared, creative works are constantly remixed, and experiences are optimized to the point of perceived perfection. Technology tends to disrupt moral sentiment and morality tends to trail innovation and possibility often by centuries. We're often more concerned with what we can do more than what we should do, and the idea of extending agency to the dead is an expression of this phenomenon. We don't know how to keep up so we just say it's evil / bad / wrong / immoral / slavery / whatever.

I'm not saying it's right to use representations of dead people. I am saying this is not a moral issue. There could be extremely good reasons for commercial use of representations of the dead as well as extremely bad ones. But we don't necessarily know what those reasons are at this point, there's a lot of science / culture / politics / lawyering that needs to happen before anyone could have a true moral view of the subject.

It would be a shame to have the morality police tell us what we are supposed to think of the future before it happens. Trying to extend the concept of agency to cover the dead is weak, someone couldn't come up with a framework to address the actual issues so they put this horrible phrase out there instead. "Ghost Slave" is so freakishly reactive, right up there with "Violent Teenage Predator." It's meant to simultaneously disgust and cut off debate because it involves taboo subjects.

Maybe a better term is "Everlasting" or "Transcendent." People might be more likely to want to consider the issue if the name wasn't so poisonous.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Both inside and outside the U.S., the deceased have ways to influence and control their property, and to consent to the disposal of or treatment of same.

What is a Will? What is estate planning?

Planning documents with strict limits, and a whole body of law protecting against the 'dead hand' (or mortmain) and 'rules against perpetuities.'
Wills get over-ridden on a regular basis for being non-viable, non-functional or just plain unreasonable, despite the wishes or consent of the deceased.



@techsoldaten- well, now I don't agree with you. That got more than a bit weird and navel-gazing.

It's simply a matter of reusing performances the studio has rights to, not magic android body doubles or whatever.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Life isn't fair. If it was, things like Baldrick wouldn't happen. Ahem. If it was, you wouldn't need a contract at all.

Again, 'moral authority' or whatever term you want to use for ethics is necessarily subjective and an argument based on it is doomed to become circular and based on little more than naked assertions from both sides. Law provides the only objective bedrock.

I agree that the ethics here are shady, my point is that the ethics of IP law are (IMO) necessarily shady and it's not raised as an objection (much) against things like the LotR tabletop game, an adaptation of Tolkien's work that has just as little permission from the creator to exist as does a hologram of Tupac.

There is a mechanism to address your concerns, throwing your hands in the air and saying that it's not fair to expect you to take steps to protect yourself in these circumstances - against a potential-mischief you're already alive to - doesn't wash. Barring a material misrepresentation, ignorance of a contractual term is not a ground to rescind it or to void its operation, nor should it be.

I feel like this would be a more fruitful discussion without the patronisation or focus on specific word choice in informal conversation.

That aside: First, you keep equating what I think are completely distinct forms of exploitation of creators' properties. This is a fair enough position to present, but you haven't made any argument other than their being legally equivalent. The position I'm arguing, is that they should not be legally equivalent, because utilising a persons work and utilising their person are distinct.

Second, falling back on law in absence of ethics gets us nowhere. Obviously no moral system nor ethical outlook is objective, but I don't think that's a problem. Law has to adapt in the face of developments in ethical paradigms. So I get to go to school in a coutry that used to disallow that to Catholics and so you get to vote and so on.

Third, it is unreasonable to expect individuals to have contractually futureproofed themselves against things which did not exist at the time of the contract. Stating that is not a toddler screaming 'it's not fair'. It's stating that it is a fundamental problem of law in a rapidly-changing digital world.

 LordofHats wrote:
I suspect this is likely to be a moot point.

Once CGI and simulation reach the point that you can fully replicate a human being, why would anyone bother replicating a real human being?

For the same reasons some companies currently use celebrity endorsements and some use cartoon mascots.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For clarity, I'm not saying there isn't an ethical angle to this. I'm saying that i) it's not a new ethical question exclusive to posthumous image-rights; and ii) debating a necessarily subjective topic is pointless.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am not an IP lawyer - or any kind of lawyer - so I'm not going to purport to lay down a cast-iron clause, but I see no reason at all why you couldn't craft a fairly boilerplate clause that, combined with the other already available mechanisms available to control your property posthumously, would control the use of your IP and dictate the mediums it is presented in.

In the instant example, it would be incredibly easy to simply include a clause barring use by any person, person(s) or organisations espousing anti-immigration politics. Unless I misunderstand the point of why the BNP were invoked. Maybe years later a court has to weigh in on what "espousing anti-immigration politics" means, but that's better protection than "none at all".

It's also not at all unfair to expect that a person entering into a legally-binding contract take basic steps to protect their interests. That is a choice you are making and courts will not relieve you of a burden because you decided that paying a lawyer a grand to look it over was a bad deal. Again, you need a material misrepresentation to plead non est factum, if it's even available in your jurisdiction.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

Using Tupac's image as a hologram is philosophically, ethically and legally no different than GW using Tolkien's IP to make a boardgame.

You don't even need a living person's consent to act as them, or take photos of them, or draw pictures of them, for profit. Impersonation is perfectly legal under the law so long as it's not for criminal purposes (i.e. fraud or misleading the public).

So if the concert lists the hologram as "Hologram of Tupac" it's in the right, if it says "Totally live, breathing Tupac, the real deal, performing on stage" that would be fraudulent.

Basically you don't own your own image/likeness or sound of your voice, you only own the rights to claim authentic use of them.

 techsoldaten wrote:
In the US, the dead cannot consent to the release of their private information. It's common for news agencies to get FBI files, army records, medical records, etc. on someone once they are deceased. These are expressions of who someone is the same as any image.

You can't take it with you. Consent stops being relevant the moment you cease to be, corpses don't have agency.

Try excavating and selling the property of a human in the US. There is actually a quite developed system for recognising the agency of deceased persons in the US. Similar systems are a major issue in athropological, antiquarian, and archaeological fields the world over.

We do recognise (or at least debate whether) that it is inappropriate to use deceased persons to generate income in ways that (could have) violated their beliefs in certain contexts. These are not wild new ideas.

Voss wrote:
@techsoldaten- well, now I don't agree with you. That got more than a bit weird and navel-gazing.

It's simply a matter of reusing performances the studio has rights to, not magic android body doubles or whatever.

Well, sure, performers see the issue this way, but is that the only way we would ever want to use representations of the dead?

How about therapy? Your significant other dies suddenly, being able to talk to their likeness could be extremely valuable in getting past the trauma.

Would that be Ghost Slavery, would people complain about consent? There's a lot packed in the name, it doesn't serve us well.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
In the US, the dead cannot consent to the release of their private information. It's common for news agencies to get FBI files, army records, medical records, etc. on someone once they are deceased. These are expressions of who someone is the same as any image.

You can't take it with you. Consent stops being relevant the moment you cease to be, corpses don't have agency.

Try excavating and selling the property of a human in the US. Their is actually a quite developed system for recognising the agency of deceased persons in the US. Similar systems are a major issue in athropological, antiquarian, and archaeological fields the world over.

We do recognise (or at least debate whether) that it is inappropriate to use deceased persons to generate income in ways that (could have) violated their beliefs in certain contexts. These are not wild new ideas.

Dealing with human remains is a completely separate issue. There's a big difference between a hologram of Tupac and digging up his skull.

 LordofHats wrote:
I suspect this is likely to be a moot point.

Once CGI and simulation reach the point that you can fully replicate a human being, why would anyone bother replicating a real human being?

Just make an idol from scratch to perfectly match your needs.

To continue the humorous circomlocutions, because for some it'd be more titillating to spend One Night in Paris than An Evening With Random Pixel Person #37.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
In the US, the dead cannot consent to the release of their private information. It's common for news agencies to get FBI files, army records, medical records, etc. on someone once they are deceased. These are expressions of who someone is the same as any image.

You can't take it with you. Consent stops being relevant the moment you cease to be, corpses don't have agency.

Try excavating and selling the property of a human in the US. Their is actually a quite developed system for recognising the agency of deceased persons in the US. Similar systems are a major issue in athropological, antiquarian, and archaeological fields the world over.

We do recognise (or at least debate whether) that it is inappropriate to use deceased persons to generate income in ways that (could have) violated their beliefs in certain contexts. These are not wild new ideas.

Dealing with human remains is a completely separate issue. There's a big difference between a hologram of Tupac and digging up his skull.

I agree entirely, but the point is that the law recognises the agency of deceased persons in some contexts. There is significant debate around whether it should recognise it in others. This is not some bonkers idea from loons desperate to find something to be annoyed about. People have been debating the legal agency of the deceased for decades and it has precedent in law (if people think that has any bearing on whether or not it's right).

 Excommunicatus wrote:
For the same reasons some companies currently use celebrity endorsements and some use cartoon mascots.

And why pay anyone (or their estate) for an endorsement when you can just make a really fancy and interactive cartoon mascot?

The idea that we'll end up in some dystopia where the dead are whored out for a buck because we can make really convincing simulations of them kind of hinges on those simulations being cheap enough in the first place, and once they're cheap and sophisticated enough that you can take them on tour and make new movies with them, why would anyone bother basing them on real people whose likenesses in that regard are owned? The middle man will be cut out.

I am not an IP lawyer - or any kind of lawyer - so I'm not going to purport to lay down a cast-iron clause, but I see no reason at all why you couldn't craft a fairly boilerplate clause that, combined with the other already available mechanisms available to control your property posthumously, would control the use of your IP and dictate the mediums it is presented in.

Anyone famous enough to leave an estate worth wanting is rich enough to have good laywers.

There is a confusing aspect in this thread where people seem to ignore that famous actors and celebrities, the only people anyone would bother "ghost slaving, have estates.

People like to make a big thing of Cushing being resurrected in Rogue One using archival footage, but Disney doesn't have any right to Cushing's likeness and still needed to address his estate to be in the legal green zone. Theoretically, they could have gone and done it without permission from his estate but then they're be risking a court battle and one that wouldn't be very hard for Cushing's estate to win since there's a very easy case to make for Disney stealing Cushing's person (nevermind all the bad PR). While that could, in turn, evoke all kinds of ethical questions, it misses the obvious that no one has to fight legal battles for the likeness of simulations.

Very soon, actors will be far less relevant than they are now. Think about it. If you can CGI remake Peter Cushing's likeness and put it over someone else's face, then why would movie studios bother remaking any actor's likeness? Why not make the perfect likeness for the character they want and then hire whatever actor can best act to plaster that likeness over? They no longer have to pay rights, or risk any legal battles, in that scenario. They actually drive their costs down, since actors lose a lot of their bargaining position when their own likeness is no longer relevant to the roles they play. I.E. this is ultimately an ethical debate that will in the foreseeable future solve itself. A moot point.

 LordofHats wrote:

And why pay anyone (or their estate) for an endorsement when you can just make a really fancy and interactive cartoon mascot?

For the same reasons they already do exactly that. I subscribe to Bill Hicks' view on marketing and marketers, so I do not know what those reasons are.

I do know that nobody who knows a thing about audio fidelity buys 'Beatz' by Dre and I strongly suspect that's instructive.