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 Excommunicatus wrote:
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.

I suspect the music industry probably won't see this shift like acting will.

As much as people might like Tara Strong as a voice actor, you can have Bubbles from the Powerpuff girl's on a product endorsement without ever consulting her or getting her permission. Now apply that to all actors through the miracle of technology. Now add 20 years. When the face of celebrity is no longer the actual faces of celebrities, then no one really cares that Warner Brother's is advertising Cheerios with the face of John Everyman, who has been acted by 5 different actors but still has the same recognizable face regardless of who they stuck it over.

 LordofHats wrote:

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.

Well, it probably wouldn't take much effort for Disney to change the laws so they can do what they want. If replicating actors entirely becomes cost-efficient enough then they likely wouldn't have to spend a lot of money to get the government to say that, yup, you can do that if you feel like it.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Well, it probably wouldn't take much effort for Disney to change the laws so they can do what they want.

That is fair. They probably totally would too XD *que the evil Mickey from South Park*

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

What about animation? Is it now taboo to draw Mozart or Gogh? Isn't a hologram just a type of drawing or animation?
I don't see the problem with this.

To me the whole digital actor or performer thing is more of a comment on how as a culture we like to wallow in nostalgia and cannot move on from our childhoods. Like, Star Wars was a pretty good film and a lot of people liked it, but here we are nearly 50 years later making films that have diverged so little from that source material we need to make digital versions of actors that have died already because God forbid we would ever do anything NEW in that genre. Luke Skywalker was not Flash Gordon, and that was a good thing for Star Wars. Edited to add: And if you do vary from the source material, woe betide you!

When I look at what is being produced, so much of it is scavenging the carcass of creativity from before. Look at the output of Wizards for Dungeons and Dragons - nearly all of the adventures they have produced are either remakes of old adventures or "reimaginings" like Storm King's Thunder. The creativity that was present in the early days seems like too much of a risk now, so we are unlikely to ever see anything new or interesting getting produced, just lazy rethreads of creative stuff people did in the past.

Of course, outside of the safe land of investor driven creation, plenty of interesting new stuff does get produced, so my fear and gripes are also overblown. But I think that is what makes me feel uncomfortable about replicating dead artists digitally.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

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

What about animation? Is it now taboo to draw Mozart or Gogh? Isn't a hologram just a type of drawing or animation?
I don't see the problem with this.

There's a difference between the two in that a drawing of a person is not an exact likeness of that person, indistinguishable from the real person. That gives it a degree of separation and makes it clear that this is another creator making a reference to someone, not an original work by the dead person. But with CGI we're getting to the point where we can create a copy of a person that nobody will ever know is a copy. That goes beyond "let's tell a story where Mozart is a character" and into "let's pretend that Mozart endorsed this work and appeared in it".


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 Da Boss wrote:
When I look at what is being produced, so much of it is scavenging the carcass of creativity from before. Look at the output of Wizards for Dungeons and Dragons - nearly all of the adventures they have produced are either remakes of old adventures or "reimaginings" like Storm King's Thunder. The creativity that was present in the early days seems like too much of a risk now, so we are unlikely to ever see anything new or interesting getting produced, just lazy rethreads of creative stuff people did in the past.

I think you're missing something here: the whole point of these premade adventures is to give something nice and safe and predictable for people who want to run the stock plot they've been using for decades and/or have a reference point for how the new edition's mechanics compare to previous editions. They aren't supposed to be new or innovative because the people who want new and innovative are building their own worlds and stories and characters completely apart from anything WOTC is doing. Even the most innovative new WOTC product is, at best, maybe going to give a couple of ideas to steal before going in the pile to gather dust for the rest of eternity.

Looking at it logically:-

-Is it immoral to use somebody's artistic expression in a way they might not have been aware of or approve of after they die? No, because as pointed out, that happens all the time (see the LOTR board game example). Heck, sometimes it even happens whilst they're alive; look at Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the classic example.

-Is it immoral to profit from a personal image or likeness of someone after they're dead? The answer is no, I can easily go out any buy a T-Shirt with anyone from Che Guevara to Henry VIII on it. In Britain specifically, somebody's likeness isn't even an inheritable asset (unlike the States); there's a reason every stall in Camden is plastered in Beatles memoribilia.

-Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

So given that the three combined effectively cover all aspects of the 'Virtual artist hologram' concern; it clearly isn't immoral. Numbers one and two are already things that are adequately protected within the existing system of rights as each country/culture considers appropriate, and would enable rights holders/descendants to eliminate the practice or profit as appropriate.

Immoral and unethical are two different things though, but I broadly agree with your point.

 Ketara wrote:
-Is it immoral to profit from a personal image or likeness of someone after they're dead? The answer is no, I can easily go out any buy a T-Shirt with anyone from Che Guevara to Henry VIII on it. In Britain specifically, somebody's likeness isn't even an inheritable asset (unlike the States); there's a reason every stall in Camden is plastered in Beatles memoribilia.

Again, I think there's a significant difference between using an iconic image of someone and using a CGI copy that is indistinguishable from the real person. Nobody buying that shirt thinks that it's really Che Guevara on it, it's clearly a portrait drawn by an artist referencing the person. But can you say the same thing about a hypothetical CGI copy of him that is so good that even the experts can't tell the difference between real video and a modern copy? Now you're blurring the line between content produced in reference to someone and content produced by someone. And that becomes a moral issue because it creates an implicit connection and endorsement of the content that the dead person may not have approved of, or even would have been strongly opposed to.

-Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

Copyright extends long past death. So it actually is illegal to make an exact copy of someone's work after they die.

That's indeed a touchy issue. I don't think we can make broad proclamation on the legality or morality of the uses such technology. As it develop itself and its uses potentially increases, I suspect we will see rules surrounding its various use emerge. I don't thin we will see a lot of dead people hologram perform though. It's actually more useful for current and popular artists who could be "at several places at the same time". "In memory" concert and performance might be a thing too, but I doubt if tomorrow someone was to produce a Elvis Presley perfect hologram a lot of people would be interested in seeing it, not more then people are interested in seeing it's way cheaper and almost just as good impersonators. Why spend millions of dollars to do something an impersonator can do for way cheaper.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
-Is it immoral to profit from a personal image or likeness of someone after they're dead? The answer is no, I can easily go out any buy a T-Shirt with anyone from Che Guevara to Henry VIII on it. In Britain specifically, somebody's likeness isn't even an inheritable asset (unlike the States); there's a reason every stall in Camden is plastered in Beatles memoribilia.

Again, I think there's a significant difference between using an iconic image of someone and using a CGI copy that is indistinguishable from the real person. Nobody buying that shirt thinks that it's really Che Guevara on it, it's clearly a portrait drawn by an artist referencing the person. But can you say the same thing about a hypothetical CGI copy of him that is so good that even the experts can't tell the difference between real video and a modern copy? Now you're blurring the line between content produced in reference to someone and content produced by someone. And that becomes a moral issue because it creates an implicit connection and endorsement of the content that the dead person may not have approved of, or even would have been strongly opposed to.

In what way? Both are cases of associating a person's image with something without their consent(which they can't give, because they're dead, and so no longer know or care. Because they're dead.). Are you really suggesting that somebody who actually knew who Che Guevara was might believe that a lifelike video of Che Guevara endorsing the latest pair of Nike trainers is somehow real? Or that it implies Che Guevara supported Nike during his lifetime?

Because making laws or ethical judgements on the basis of reactions from people who would, ie people so stupid they barely qualify for sentience, sounds pretty daft to me. Anyway, require companies place a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie/advert/holoperformance stating "Hey, you there, aye you, third from the right and five rows down, the person half a braincell from being declared a vegetable and having their life support switched off: This. Depiction. Of. [insert person]. Is. Not. Real." and presto, problem solved.

-Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

Copyright extends long past death. So it actually is illegal to make an exact copy of someone's work after they die.

I believe this was about remixing, not copying wholesale. So, rather than just having the audio of a person speaking in the track, you could sample the audio and an image of them saying it for the music video type thing.

 Peregrine wrote:

Again, I think there's a significant difference between using an iconic image of someone and using a CGI copy that is indistinguishable from the real person.

Whether the image is 'iconic' or not is irrelevant. As is the nature of the replication. I can use a photograph of good old Che, a drawing that looks sort of like him if I squint sideways, or a full 3d sculpture. The fact that I can paint an exceptional image or sculpt a really convincing waxwork has no bearing on the matter. The person is dead, and it's a likeness of them. The quality or form of the reproduction means nothing. Saying that:-

Nobody buying that shirt thinks that it's really Che Guevara on it, it's clearly a portrait drawn by an artist referencing the person.

means even less than nothing, because nobody is actually walking around thinking a John Lennon hologram is John Lennon risen from the dead. And even if somebody did, it means absolutely nothing in a legal or moral sense. I can be a really convincing Elvis lookalike and it means nothing in copyright terms and is hardly a cause for ethical dispute.

If we're going to be really picky, I don't need to be copying Barack Obama to steal his look and use it for a broadcast/music video/thanks Obama parody. I can be copying one of his lookalikes instead and get exactly the same result, on account of the fact that human features are so limited that there's usually a fairly good copy of any given person walking the streets at any given moment. How a person looks certainly isn't a uniqe thing even whilst they're alive; let alone fifty years later.

Would anyone care if instead of CGI-ing Peter Cushing in SW, they brought in an exact lookalike? I doubt it. Yet the result would have been identical to the viewer.

Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

Copyright extends long past death. So it actually is illegal to make an exact copy of someone's work after they die.

I'm afraid if you can't discern between 'remixing/adapting content' and 'making an exact copy of', there's not much discussion to be had.

For those of you disagreeing that a person's reputation/image/etc matter after death would you approve of making a gay sex tape, perfectly realistic and indistinguishable from the real thing, of the pope? Would you shrug it off as "it's fine, he's dead so who cares"?

 Peregrine wrote:
For those of you disagreeing that a person's reputation/image/etc matter after death would you approve of making a gay sex tape, perfectly realistic and indistinguishable from the real thing, of the pope? Would you shrug it off as "it's fine, he's dead so who cares"?

What makes it a tape of 'the Pope', given that the man with the hat is dead? What's the difference as compared to having a porn tape made with an Amy Winehouse lookalike? (it's happened)

If I want to have a bloke dress up like Samuel L. Jackson in full Mace Windu regalia and film 'Star Bores: The Final Bonking' tomorrow, I don't think anyone would care; regardless of whether Jackson was alive or corked it in a car accident tomorrow. If I choose to spend lots of money and have it CGI'd instead, the only thing I'd be is grossly profligate with my spending and bad at naming things.


To flip this on its head in an interesting corollary, what if I make a CGI image of a man having gay sex, and a man who looks just like that later becomes Pope?

LordofHats wrote: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.

The same reason they pay "next to nothing" to newbie actors and tens of millions to stars who are famous. It helps them sell tickets. feth, they even pay actors quite well to not even appear visibly in their movies (all the famous people who get hired for Pixar movies and other animated blockbusters).

I don't think "better tech" would just make this system (influence of famous people) crumble easily. Famous/rich actors already use advances in 3D to retouch their likeness in movies, like it's done with Photoshop in photos.
https://mashable.com/2014/12/01/hollywood-secret-beauty-procedure/?europe=true

Ketara wrote:

Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

Copyright extends long past death. So it actually is illegal to make an exact copy of someone's work after they die.

I'm afraid if you can't discern between 'remixing/adapting content' and 'making an exact copy of', there's not much discussion to be had.

I think remixing would fall under derivative work and for that you'd need a license from the original copyright holder because you are making a copy of their face (that they should own the rights to). And some of those ideas in this thread would probably fall under personality rights in some way.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

Right to Prepare Derivative Works
Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work.

Something like that was the reason why Jet Li declined to be part of the Matrix movies: https://www.slashfilm.com/jet-li-the-matrix-turned-down/

“I realized the Americans wanted me to film for three months but be with the crew for nine. And for six months, they wanted to record and copy all my moves into a digital library. By the end of the recording, the right to these moves would go to them.
[…]
I was thinking: I’ve been training my entire life. And we martial artists could only grow older. Yet they could own [my moves] as an intellectual property forever. So I said I couldn’t do that.”

That being said: Who here is ready to be replicated (after you are dead) by a political fascist far right party and to be made to proclaim your allegiance to that cause in some propaganda video?

We are not that far away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake

I do think it's pretty creepy/tasteless, and consent (and the lack of ability withhold it) is the crux of it. I draw a distinction between a single iconic image of a person (like Che, lets say), and a complete reproduction of a person, more so when it is potentially being used to do something the person would have found odious in life. Tupac's mother licensing his likeness to perform holographic 2pac songs is probably the most shallow end of this slippery slope (since he was close to her, and she presumably would have some inclination to protect his vision), to Mitchell Winehouse continuing to exploit his daughter in perpetuity, and then we get into Kurt Cobain's likeness being used to perform Guns N Roses songs in one of those Guitar Hero games - something he clearly would have loathed.

Whether or not it's legally defensible isn't a particularly useful metric for whether or not something is morally right.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
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.

It's probably pretty easy to find moral o-o-outrage when you invent it on your own out of any casual conversation you happen to gaze down upon from your superior perch.

A thought for folks that want to equate all likeness rights and/or suggest that if you have granted rights to your image then any use of that image is reasonable in perpetuity: the photographer that took photos at your wedding owns images of you. Depending on your contract, they likely have rights to infinite replication and modification of those images. We are very close to making indistinguishable cgi actors from a handful of images. Have a think where this goes.


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 Ketara wrote:
Looking at it logically:-

-Is it immoral to use somebody's artistic expression in a way they might not have been aware of or approve of after they die? No, because as pointed out, that happens all the time (see the LOTR board game example). Heck, sometimes it even happens whilst they're alive; look at Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the classic example.

Your examples prove its legality, not morality.

-Is it immoral to profit from a personal image or likeness of someone after they're dead? The answer is no, I can easily go out any buy a T-Shirt with anyone from Che Guevara to Henry VIII on it. In Britain specifically, somebody's likeness isn't even an inheritable asset (unlike the States); there's a reason every stall in Camden is plastered in Beatles memoribilia.

Your examples prove its legality, not morality.

Is it illegal to remix/adapt somebody's work after they die? Again, no. Artists steal from each other all the time to create new content.

There are a lot of factors at play here. Sometimes it is illegal. Sometimes it isn't.

So given that the three combined effectively cover all aspects of the 'Virtual artist hologram' concern; it clearly isn't immoral.

You haven't demonstrated this.

Numbers one and two are already things that are adequately protected within the existing system of rights as each country/culture considers appropriate, and would enable rights holders/descendants to eliminate the practice or profit as appropriate.

Adequately is a subjective term that's doing a huge amount of work here.

nfe wrote:
A thought for folks that want to equate all likeness rights and/or suggest that if you have granted rights to your image then any use of that image is reasonable in perpetuity: the photographer that took photos at your wedding owns images of you. Depending on your contract, they likely have rights to infinite replication and modification of those images. We are very close to making indistinguishable cgi actors from a handful of images. Have a think where this goes.

Nowhere, because your understanding of the law in this regard is minimal. The photographer owns the copyright for those images, specifically. And nothing else.

Also, even if that weren't true, and a wedding photographer decided, for some completely idiotic reason, to take an image of me and use it to feature a fake version of me in a gay porno years after my death, well, I would be dead, so who gives a feth? Because I'd be dead. They could create a version of one of those angry Hitler speeches with my face superimposed on it, and I'd still lack the ability to care, because I'd be dead, and so would lack the capacity to feel or think or care about anything. Because dead.

 Ouze wrote:
I do think it's pretty creepy/tasteless, and consent (and the lack of ability withhold it) is the crux of it. I draw a distinction between a single iconic image of a person (like Che, lets say), and a complete reproduction of a person, more so when it is potentially being used to do something the person would have found odious in life. Tupac's mother licensing his likeness to perform holographic 2pac songs is probably the most shallow end of this slippery slope (since he was close to her, and she presumably would have some inclination to protect his vision), to Mitchell Winehouse continuing to exploit his daughter in perpetuity, and then we get into Kurt Cobain's likeness being used to perform Guns N Roses songs in one of those Guitar Hero games - something he clearly would have loathed.

Whether or not it's legally defensible isn't a particularly useful metric for whether or not something is morally right.

And what's "morally right" is a poor metric for deciding what should and shouldn't be legal, given it's entirely subjective. Plenty of people think giving gay folk human rights is morally wrong, I'm entirely comfortable with their opinion of what constitutes "creepy/tasteless" not being the basis for any laws.

What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Others have brought up lookalikes before, but I'm going to do it again because the "it's immoral" side of this discussion seems to be allergic to actually addressing any of the counterpoints that keep being brought up: how does this principle that someone should be able to control how their likeness is used, even after death, work with lookalikes and impersonators? Should a famous person or, more likely, their estate be allowed to obtain legal injunctions against people who bear a more than passing resemblance to them doing certain things? If a singer was highly religious and a rampant homophobe in life and, some time after they die, an openly gay person were to begin doing impersonation performances, should that singer's estate be allowed to sue the impersonator for associating their name and likeness with something the singer despised?

People keep "drawing a distinction", but nobody has yet provided a satisfactory explanation of how a hologram or a Tarkin-esque situation is actually different to all the other uses of someone's likeness that occurs already with & without their consent without anyone batting an eye.

And no, "I think it's a bit icky" is not sufficient.

 Yodhrin wrote:
What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Dead people DO have rights, though? You are aware you can't just harvest the organs of someone who died without their prior consent, right? Not the same as IP but that is a principle.

 Yodhrin wrote:

nfe wrote:
A thought for folks that want to equate all likeness rights and/or suggest that if you have granted rights to your image then any use of that image is reasonable in perpetuity: the photographer that took photos at your wedding owns images of you. Depending on your contract, they likely have rights to infinite replication and modification of those images. We are very close to making indistinguishable cgi actors from a handful of images. Have a think where this goes.

Nowhere, because your understanding of the law in this regard is minimal. The photographer owns the copyright for those images, specifically. And nothing else.

I agree. I was addressing those who are conflating all likeness rights. As was abundantly clear.

That said, you'll be surprised as to exactly the rights many wedding photographers do have to their clients images and likenesses. I have a very unfortunate friend in the midst of a legal battle just now over a wedding photographer's deepfake antics.

Also, even if that weren't true, and a wedding photographer decided, for some completely idiotic reason, to take an image of me and use it to feature a fake version of me in a gay porno years after my death, well, I would be dead, so who gives a feth?

Not you. But lots of people do take the rights of the deceased seriously. There is a considerable body of law dealing with this.

 Ouze wrote:
I do think it's pretty creepy/tasteless, and consent (and the lack of ability withhold it) is the crux of it. I draw a distinction between a single iconic image of a person (like Che, lets say), and a complete reproduction of a person, more so when it is potentially being used to do something the person would have found odious in life. Tupac's mother licensing his likeness to perform holographic 2pac songs is probably the most shallow end of this slippery slope (since he was close to her, and she presumably would have some inclination to protect his vision), to Mitchell Winehouse continuing to exploit his daughter in perpetuity, and then we get into Kurt Cobain's likeness being used to perform Guns N Roses songs in one of those Guitar Hero games - something he clearly would have loathed.

Whether or not it's legally defensible isn't a particularly useful metric for whether or not something is morally right.

And what's "morally right" is a poor metric for deciding what should and shouldn't be legal, given it's entirely subjective. Plenty of people think giving gay folk human rights is morally wrong, I'm entirely comfortable with their opinion of what constitutes "creepy/tasteless" not being the basis for any laws.

On the contrary, what is considered morally right is the ONLY metric for legality. The only reason that gay people have their rights protected (in some territories) is because of moral paradigm shifts that were then followed in law.

What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Many people believe the dead can be harmed and many laws reflect this. Have a look at, for example, Native American Repatriation laws.

Others have brought up lookalikes before, but I'm going to do it again because the "it's immoral" side of this discussion seems to be allergic to actually addressing any of the counterpoints that keep being brought up: how does this principle that someone should be able to control how their likeness is used, even after death, work with lookalikes and impersonators? Should a famous person or, more likely, their estate be allowed to obtain legal injunctions against people who bear a more than passing resemblance to them doing certain things? If a singer was highly religious and a rampant homophobe in life and, some time after they die, an openly gay person were to begin doing impersonation performances, should that singer's estate be allowed to sue the impersonator for associating their name and likeness with something the singer despised?

People keep "drawing a distinction", but nobody has yet provided a satisfactory explanation of how a hologram or a Tarkin-esque situation is actually different to all the other uses of someone's likeness that occurs already with & without their consent without anyone batting an eye.

Your disagreement is not the same as no one addressing the issue or providing an explanation.

The principal is that someone should be able to consent to the use of their likeness (or a facsimile so accurate that it is indistinguishable).. A lookalike is not them. A rubbish CGI render isn't either. I don't think many people are really concerned about Cushing as Tarkin yet. The problem is futureproofing against the point where it is possible to make actors who an audience without prior knowledge cannot tell apart from the real actor.

No one sees the Che Guevara image on a t shirt and thinks that he specifically endorsed Rupert the white Oxbridge English lit student with dreadlocks and a cheesecloth shirt. It is possible, however, that someone sees that video of your gran getting double teamed by Rupert and his mate Monty and thinks it is real. I don't think that your cousin selling Rupe the rights to her likeness makes that ok.

If this tech becomes easier/more prominent...the porn industry will explode.

Count me among those who see the entertainment industry/copywrite issue as trivial next to the political and diplomatic issue of getting important figures in government to say/do things they did not actually do. (I feel like the ramifications can be mentioned without this sliding into politics--mods feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

 Ouze wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Dead people DO have rights, though? You are aware you can't just harvest the organs of someone who died without their prior consent, right? Not the same as IP but that is a principle.

Ah, but they can and do refuse to harvest organs even when the person clearly wanted it done, signed up to be a doner (spelling?) etc if the living family objects so even there the rights and wishes of the dead are trumped by those of the living

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Dead people DO have rights, though? You are aware you can't just harvest the organs of someone who died without their prior consent, right? Not the same as IP but that is a principle.

Ah, but they can and do refuse to harvest organs even when the person clearly wanted it done, signed up to be a doner (spelling?) etc if the living family objects so even there the rights and wishes of the dead are trumped by those of the living

That vastly depends on the law in such a case, in case of switzerland you wouldn't get away with denial of such.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Dead people DO have rights, though? You are aware you can't just harvest the organs of someone who died without their prior consent, right? Not the same as IP but that is a principle.

Ah, but they can and do refuse to harvest organs even when the person clearly wanted it done, signed up to be a doner (spelling?) etc if the living family objects so even there the rights and wishes of the dead are trumped by those of the living

That vastly depends on the law in such a case, in case of switzerland you wouldn't get away with denial of such.

Which merely further undermines the idea that there is some universal moral principle at stake here. In this country fairly soon they in fact *will* be able to just "take your organs after you die", because we're switching to an opt-out system for organ donation.

nfe wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I do think it's pretty creepy/tasteless, and consent (and the lack of ability withhold it) is the crux of it. I draw a distinction between a single iconic image of a person (like Che, lets say), and a complete reproduction of a person, more so when it is potentially being used to do something the person would have found odious in life. Tupac's mother licensing his likeness to perform holographic 2pac songs is probably the most shallow end of this slippery slope (since he was close to her, and she presumably would have some inclination to protect his vision), to Mitchell Winehouse continuing to exploit his daughter in perpetuity, and then we get into Kurt Cobain's likeness being used to perform Guns N Roses songs in one of those Guitar Hero games - something he clearly would have loathed.

Whether or not it's legally defensible isn't a particularly useful metric for whether or not something is morally right.

And what's "morally right" is a poor metric for deciding what should and shouldn't be legal, given it's entirely subjective. Plenty of people think giving gay folk human rights is morally wrong, I'm entirely comfortable with their opinion of what constitutes "creepy/tasteless" not being the basis for any laws.

On the contrary, what is considered morally right is the ONLY metric for legality. The only reason that gay people have their rights protected (in some territories) is because of moral paradigm shifts that were then followed in law.

But that's complete nonsense, because it completely undermines the entire idea of human rights. You're literally arguing that it would be perfectly OK for a government to make a law requiring that all gingers be sterilised, providing enough people agreed that was moral. That all historical laws, regardless of how unjust, were also moral. I mean, not to go all Godwin, but the Nazi regime thought it was moral, was Nazism a sound basis for the law?

There has to be a principle beyond the whims of the moment that laws can be measured against, and whether something causes demonstrable harm is the only reasonable one.

What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Many people believe the dead can be harmed and many laws reflect this. Have a look at, for example, Native American Repatriation laws.

Many people believe Elvis is alive and working as a fry cook in Idaho, the law should no more reflect people's religiosity than it should reflect that. The key word that you ignored there is quantifiable. The dead are dead, they cannot be harmed in any measurable way. The kind of laws you're referring to are about the living, not the dead; they placate the living descendants, and they are an opportunity for the living and extant authorities to demonstrate sensitivity to the living community.

Others have brought up lookalikes before, but I'm going to do it again because the "it's immoral" side of this discussion seems to be allergic to actually addressing any of the counterpoints that keep being brought up: how does this principle that someone should be able to control how their likeness is used, even after death, work with lookalikes and impersonators? Should a famous person or, more likely, their estate be allowed to obtain legal injunctions against people who bear a more than passing resemblance to them doing certain things? If a singer was highly religious and a rampant homophobe in life and, some time after they die, an openly gay person were to begin doing impersonation performances, should that singer's estate be allowed to sue the impersonator for associating their name and likeness with something the singer despised?

People keep "drawing a distinction", but nobody has yet provided a satisfactory explanation of how a hologram or a Tarkin-esque situation is actually different to all the other uses of someone's likeness that occurs already with & without their consent without anyone batting an eye.

Your disagreement is not the same as no one addressing the issue or providing an explanation.

Obviously. It's the consistent inability to actually do those things that's at issue.

The principal is that someone should be able to consent to the use of their likeness (or a facsimile so accurate that it is indistinguishable).. A lookalike is not them. A rubbish CGI render isn't either. I don't think many people are really concerned about Cushing as Tarkin yet. The problem is futureproofing against the point where it is possible to make actors who an audience without prior knowledge cannot tell apart from the real actor.

You keep flipping back and forward. Likeness is likeness. Explain in an actually consistent manner what the difference is, and why that difference is sufficient to justify entirely different legal frameworks.

No one sees the Che Guevara image on a t shirt and thinks that he specifically endorsed Rupert the white Oxbridge English lit student with dreadlocks and a cheesecloth shirt. It is possible, however, that someone sees that video of your gran getting double teamed by Rupert and his mate Monty and thinks it is real. I don't think that your cousin selling Rupe the rights to her likeness makes that ok.

This, incidentally, is not that.

For a start, your scenario has nothing to do with anything that anyone has been saying. Why is someone's cousin selling rights to things? Who's suggested that should be a thing? There are two possible versions of the scenario; version one involves the "someone" who sees the video being a person who knows my gran, in which case they would know them well enough to doubt the veracity of the video, and version two has a "someone" who has no idea who my gran is, in which case so what? My gran is dead, and cannot be harmed. The person who saw the video and believed it was real has no impact on her or me or anyone else who knew her, so no harm has been done to anybody living. Anybody who did subsequently see the video who did know her would loop back to version one.

Moreover, you've still failed to demonstrate any tangible difference between this and any other usage of my gran's likeness. Do you believe it's somehow less offensive if Rupert were to produce a porno of my gran if his chosen medium was lifelike but drawn animation? Or 3D render that clearly isn't real but is still recognisably my gran? Once the likeness is sufficient to be in no doubt as to who the work/impersonation/t-shirt is meant to refer to, it doesn't matter how much you improve the fidelity, any damage that was going to be done has been done, or was never really "damage" in the first place.

And of course, your scenario ignores the obvious: in a world where fakes can be produced that are indistinguishable from reality, people adjust the level of trust they give to that form of media. People have been almost flawlessly photoshopping famous peoples' heads onto porno scenes for years now, has anyone had their career ended or their reputation tainted by such a fake? I've never heard of it happening, because once people realised what was possible they adjusted how they reacted to photographs. I mean gak, "that looks photoshopped, I can tell by the pixels" was one of the OG memes-before-people-called-them-that.

A dead person can be defamed. FWIW. In the case of an adult video surfacing featuring an unauthorized hologram/facsimile of your nan, her estate would probably have a decent shout at getting it shut down and a damages award.

Not really on topic, but while I agree that quantifiable harm ought to be the lantern that guides the law, in reality it simply isn't - there's an awful lot of Judeo-Christian moralizing 'leftover' in the laws of the U.K., the U.S., and probably inter alia, Canada. Also, it really just shifts the debate to what constitutes 'harm', public policy and proximity issues.

It's indisputable that intentionally driving a rival out of business causes them harm, it's also uncontroversial that said harm will almost never be a cause of action at law.

But that's complete nonsense, because it completely undermines the entire idea of human rights. You're literally arguing that it would be perfectly OK for a government to make a law requiring that all gingers be sterilised, providing enough people agreed that was moral. That all historical laws, regardless of how unjust, were also moral. I mean, not to go all Godwin, but the Nazi regime thought it was moral, was Nazism a sound basis for the law?

There has to be a principle beyond the whims of the moment that laws can be measured against, and whether something causes demonstrable harm is the only reasonable one.

Slightly rambely but let me explain: Generally there are two schools of philosophy of law one following morales and one determining Morals.

Basically Legitimacy before legality and the legality before legitimacy approach.

Both of these conflict on certain levels and scenarios:
Take f.e. the killing of gadhaffi, legaly he would've been protected by the human rights, legitimatly to kill him is perfectly acceptable.

You can see the same exemple even on state building level, Switzerland f.e. can via initiative,etc. change it's constitution at any point generally by popular vote. (legitimacy before legality approach, if you know anything about switzerland you will understand why legitimacy is so much favoured here as a guiding principle) and even the highcourt get's voted on all 4 years by parlament and has no controll over parlament.

In germany you have the constitutional court which can outrule parlament and generally is more powerfull (legality before legitimacy approach)


also additionally for Nazi germany, it tried to gain legitimacy by giving itself a "quasi" legal approach whenever possible. Nazi germany legalized it's crimes basically in order to maintain the legitimacy it gained via maintaing the facade of legality (for a populus which generrally accepts legality --> legitimacy)

nfe wrote:

So given that the three combined effectively cover all aspects of the 'Virtual artist hologram' concern; it clearly isn't immoral.

You haven't demonstrated this.

I believe I have, actually. Look closer at your own language. To take your oft-repeated comment

Your examples prove its legality, not morality.

You say that I haven't 'proved' that these things are moral. But that's a contradiction in terms. Morality is intrinsically subjective. If we disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, all conceptions of 'morality' would go with us. I therefore can never 'prove' that something is moral, and I wouldn't attempt to try, because the goalposts are infinitely mutable. Your need for me to 'prove' something is moral is an unmeetable criteria. All I can do in actuality is demonstrate that within the society and culture I currently operate in, events and actions with identical ramifications occur every day without being commonly regarded as 'immoral'.

And that? I have done. People frequently use the work of others in ways which the original creator would not approve. People's likenesses are regularly commodified after their death in a multitude of ways. And fresh artistic works (be they drawn art, performances, sculptures, ways of singing a song, whatever) are regularly created by drawing inspiration from existing ones. These things occur regularly and in many ways, shapes and forms with nobody raising an eyebrow or regarding it as 'immoral'. I have provided examples, but others are not hard to find.

Ergo, I can declare that within the bounds of regular conduct within my culture/society, this is not something which should typically regarded as immoral. You might get the odd outlier, but the core concepts are ones which my culture/society regularly endorses and engages with on a daily basis. Finit.

As It happens, there's a Modern and Contemporary conference at Birmingham Uni today that a friend is speaking at and one of the papers sounds like it might deal with exactly this topic (though obviously the usual pinch of salt is required when putting any faith in the precision of an academic conference paper title) - I'll ask if any of the conference is being recorded/streamed.

 Yodhrin wrote:

nfe wrote:


On the contrary, what is considered morally right is the ONLY metric for legality. The only reason that gay people have their rights protected (in some territories) is because of moral paradigm shifts that were then followed in law.

But that's complete nonsense, because it completely undermines the entire idea of human rights. You're literally arguing that it would be perfectly OK for a government to make a law requiring that all gingers be sterilised, providing enough people agreed that was moral. That all historical laws, regardless of how unjust, were also moral. I mean, not to go all Godwin, but the Nazi regime thought it was moral, was Nazism a sound basis for the law?

I'm arguing the exact opposite. I specifically used the examples of gay marriage and women's enfranchisement earlier to argue against positions that insist morality and legality are equivalent or that the latter should be used to gauge the former. Yes, insisting that perceived morality dictate law could, theoretically, result in horrendous consequences if somewhere was bizarrely subject to a moral paradigm shift that realigned it with values from a millennia ago, but we do not live in a planet of isolated enclaves and I'm going to go ahead and not worry about reductio ad absurdum arguments of that scale. The only time when this is a real threat is when one group exerts new control over another and forces them to respect a legal system derived from a moral system in which they have not previously existed (say the Christianisation of Africa or the ongoing efforts by China to force Muoso people to behave like good wholesome nuclear families).

The moral paradigm of the time already leads lawmaking - it lags behind, because of the nature of legal systems and legislative change in most territories, but that's how it works. How else did we end up with legal homosexuality in the UK?

There has to be a principle beyond the whims of the moment that laws can be measured against, and whether something causes demonstrable harm is the only reasonable one.

What is a good basis for deciding how to construct the law is whether or not a thing causes anyone any quantifiable and unreasonable harm. Since the individuals in question are dead and so literally cannot be harmed, there's no problem there.

Many people believe the dead can be harmed and many laws reflect this. Have a look at, for example, Native American Repatriation laws.

Many people believe Elvis is alive and working as a fry cook in Idaho, the law should no more reflect people's religiosity than it should reflect that. The key word that you ignored there is quantifiable. The dead are dead, they cannot be harmed in any measurable way. The kind of laws you're referring to are about the living, not the dead; they placate the living descendants, and they are an opportunity for the living and extant authorities to demonstrate sensitivity to the living community.

We're just not going to agree here so there's not a whole lot of point in cracking on. I don't think it's helpful to hold treat genuinely held beliefs with such derision, perhaps in large part due to working directly with such communities, and in a field where these are constant, practical issues, but I fully realise lots of people subscribe completely to western rationalist traditions and think it's absurd. And I believe that the dead can be harmed, because I don't think reducing 'harm' to identifiable damage visited upon a living person' is a useful or effective way of defining harm in relation to individuals in a social context. This is at least in part due to how I understand society and human interaction as philosophical concepts, however, and again I except entirely that whilst it is the majority view in my field and, I'd argue, around the globe, it is not the dominant position in western rationalist ontologies.

nb. Because there's every chance that someone will read it as a slight, I am using 'western rationalist' as a technical expression for the post-enlightenment scientific traditional that has dominated European, North-American, and Antipodean social and political thought for the last several centuries, not with any value-judgement implications.

The principal is that someone should be able to consent to the use of their likeness (or a facsimile so accurate that it is indistinguishable).. A lookalike is not them. A rubbish CGI render isn't either. I don't think many people are really concerned about Cushing as Tarkin yet. The problem is futureproofing against the point where it is possible to make actors who an audience without prior knowledge cannot tell apart from the real actor.

You keep flipping back and forward. Likeness is likeness. Explain in an actually consistent manner what the difference is, and why that difference is sufficient to justify entirely different legal frameworks.

The difference is the ability to discern (or to reasonably expect an audience to discern) between a representation of an individual and the individual.

In the first instance, in the case of all newly created digital performances, I think it matters in because many (most? almost all [so far]?) individuals who have granted legal ownership of their likeness (or certain instances of their likeness) to individuals/entities had no knowledge of the ways in which it would later be used - though this is an issue with almost any intersection of technology and law.

It also matters because it allows an owner to situate a actual performer, insofar as anyone knows, in contexts against their will. Whether it is really them, and whether people who know them could be expected to tell the difference, is, in my view, immaterial, as the audience does not, especially if they are chronologically removed from the performance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:

So given that the three combined effectively cover all aspects of the 'Virtual artist hologram' concern; it clearly isn't immoral.

You haven't demonstrated this.

I believe I have, actually. Look closer at your own language. To take your oft-repeated comment

Your examples prove its legality, not morality.

You say that I haven't 'proved' that these things are moral. But that's a contradiction in terms. Morality is intrinsically subjective. If we disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, all conceptions of 'morality' would go with us. I therefore can never 'prove' that something is moral, and I wouldn't attempt to try, because the goalposts are infinitely mutable. Your need for me to 'prove' something is moral is an unmeetable criteria.

My twice-repeated comment specifically addressed rhetorical questions in which you ask if something is immoral before concluding that it is not. I quite agree that proving whether something is moral is impossible, but your language presented binary options and concluded that examples were NOT immoral, and then claimed that this established that something is 'clearly not immoral'.

All I can do in actuality is demonstrate that within the society and culture I currently operate in, events and actions with identical ramifications occur every day without being commonly regarded as 'immoral'.

This is a perfectly fair argument - it just requires a bunch of qualifiers that weren't in your previous post. I still don't think you've done it, though:

And that? I have done. People frequently use the work of others in ways which the original creator would not approve. People's likenesses are regularly commodified after their death in a multitude of ways. And fresh artistic works (be they drawn art, performances, sculptures, ways of singing a song, whatever) are regularly created by drawing inspiration from existing ones. These things occur regularly and in many ways, shapes and forms with nobody raising an eyebrow or regarding it as 'immoral'. I have provided examples, but others are not hard to find.

Ergo, I can declare that within the bounds of regular conduct within my culture/society, this is not something which should typically regarded as immoral. You might get the odd outlier, but the core concepts are ones which my culture/society regularly endorses and engages with on a daily basis. Finit.

Because there is a technological paradigm shift afoot that represents a vast leap in terms of what can achieved by utilising someone's likeness or performance. Comparing a drawing or photograph of someone, a cover of a song, taking inspiration from their canon, to a version of them, created without their consent, that is indistinguishable from the real thing and that can be made to do as you please is not reasonable.

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

Exactly.