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Prestor Jon wrote:
The actors don’t even need to be dead. There are videos up on YouTube that show how people can modify scenes from the Solo movie to put Harrison Ford’s face overlaid on Alden Ehrenreich’s face. The technology exists to do it and Disney owns all the footage of Ford from the original trilogy, they own the rights to the Han Solo character. Disney has the ability to cast a no name actor to do the physical acting while using the footage they had from the previous movies to put Ford’s face in the movie that was the origin story of a character they owned. If Disney has decided to do that would they have needed Ford’s permission? Lucasfilm didn’t need to get the actor’s permission to release the new revised original trilogy. Warner Bros doesn’t need to get Ford’s permission every time they release a new version of Blade Runner. In both cases the studio was modifying existing footage or recutting the movie to create a new version which isn’t notably different from modifying existing footage and audio of Ford from the original trilogy to create a synthesized performance in Solo. Disney gets to profit off of Ford’s likeness, voice and previous acting performance that they already own and the consumer gets fan service, my kids get to see the same Han Solo character I saw at their age.

Are we already at a point in time at which studios can use software programs to create as many new synthesized performances by actors as they want once the studios have whatever the minimum amount of footage the programs need as input to create footage of the actor saying and doing whatever the studio wants in the new movies? Do actors have the right to prevent studios from doing that? If not, should they?

Are those actors alive and capable of signing a contract? Then they have the right to prevent the studio doing whatever they like.

The point is that once they are dead, and after a fair period to allow their immediate family to work through their grief(and or a direct payment to them to assuage it, since apparently it's not sleazy to profit from "ghost slavery" if you happen to be related to the "enslaved"), why should anyone care what the studio or anyone else does with them? The dead actor/musician certainly doesn't, since they're dead.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The actors don’t even need to be dead. There are videos up on YouTube that show how people can modify scenes from the Solo movie to put Harrison Ford’s face overlaid on Alden Ehrenreich’s face. The technology exists to do it and Disney owns all the footage of Ford from the original trilogy, they own the rights to the Han Solo character. Disney has the ability to cast a no name actor to do the physical acting while using the footage they had from the previous movies to put Ford’s face in the movie that was the origin story of a character they owned. If Disney has decided to do that would they have needed Ford’s permission? Lucasfilm didn’t need to get the actor’s permission to release the new revised original trilogy. Warner Bros doesn’t need to get Ford’s permission every time they release a new version of Blade Runner. In both cases the studio was modifying existing footage or recutting the movie to create a new version which isn’t notably different from modifying existing footage and audio of Ford from the original trilogy to create a synthesized performance in Solo. Disney gets to profit off of Ford’s likeness, voice and previous acting performance that they already own and the consumer gets fan service, my kids get to see the same Han Solo character I saw at their age.

Are we already at a point in time at which studios can use software programs to create as many new synthesized performances by actors as they want once the studios have whatever the minimum amount of footage the programs need as input to create footage of the actor saying and doing whatever the studio wants in the new movies? Do actors have the right to prevent studios from doing that? If not, should they?

Are those actors alive and capable of signing a contract? Then they have the right to prevent the studio doing whatever they like.

The point is that once they are dead, and after a fair period to allow their immediate family to work through their grief(and or a direct payment to them to assuage it, since apparently it's not sleazy to profit from "ghost slavery" if you happen to be related to the "enslaved"), why should anyone care what the studio or anyone else does with them? The dead actor/musician certainly doesn't, since they're dead.

The fact this conversation continues is very problematic.

If feels like we are trying to extend agency to a dead horse, which may be worse than the kicks.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The actors don’t even need to be dead. There are videos up on YouTube that show how people can modify scenes from the Solo movie to put Harrison Ford’s face overlaid on Alden Ehrenreich’s face. The technology exists to do it and Disney owns all the footage of Ford from the original trilogy, they own the rights to the Han Solo character. Disney has the ability to cast a no name actor to do the physical acting while using the footage they had from the previous movies to put Ford’s face in the movie that was the origin story of a character they owned. If Disney has decided to do that would they have needed Ford’s permission? Lucasfilm didn’t need to get the actor’s permission to release the new revised original trilogy. Warner Bros doesn’t need to get Ford’s permission every time they release a new version of Blade Runner. In both cases the studio was modifying existing footage or recutting the movie to create a new version which isn’t notably different from modifying existing footage and audio of Ford from the original trilogy to create a synthesized performance in Solo. Disney gets to profit off of Ford’s likeness, voice and previous acting performance that they already own and the consumer gets fan service, my kids get to see the same Han Solo character I saw at their age.

Are we already at a point in time at which studios can use software programs to create as many new synthesized performances by actors as they want once the studios have whatever the minimum amount of footage the programs need as input to create footage of the actor saying and doing whatever the studio wants in the new movies? Do actors have the right to prevent studios from doing that? If not, should they?

Are those actors alive and capable of signing a contract? Then they have the right to prevent the studio doing whatever they like.

The point is that once they are dead, and after a fair period to allow their immediate family to work through their grief(and or a direct payment to them to assuage it, since apparently it's not sleazy to profit from "ghost slavery" if you happen to be related to the "enslaved"), why should anyone care what the studio or anyone else does with them? The dead actor/musician certainly doesn't, since they're dead.

The fact this conversation continues is very problematic.

If feels like we are trying to extend agency to a dead horse, which may be worse than the kicks.

You both seem to be missing my point so I’m going to try to restate it more clearly.

Lucasfilm owned the original Star Wars trilogy films. When George Lucas decided to digitally alter and rerelease the films he did t need to get the actors’ permission nor did the actors have an ongoing vested interest in the films that gave them the right or ability to challenge or block Lucas from doing so. Lucasfilm changed the cantina scene to make Greedo shoot first and added a CGI Jabba overlaid on a human actor in order to include a previously unused scene. Harrison Ford was in both of those scenes but he could not prevent Lucas from altering the footage to make a new movie and profiting from the sale of that movie. Actors are contracted to act in films but unless specified in the contract they have no ownership rights to the films they act in. Just like a company can contract a software engineer to work on a specific development project, compensate them for their work and end their employment once the program they were hired to help create is complete. The company can use that software program as they like and profit from it without needing the programmers’ permission.

Lucasfilm didn’t need Ford’s permission to use digitally altered footage they owned to create a new film and profit from that film. Since that is legal why is it illegal for Disney to use footage of Ford that they own to digitally alter a movie (putting Ford’s face on Ehrenreich) to make a new movie and profit from it? I don’t see the difference, if you do please elaborate on it for me.

In regards to the deceased no longer having agency we are in agreement. Once a person died they no longer have the ability to contract the use of their likeness or voice to a studio nor can they object to it; they can’t do anything they’re dead. However I see no compelling reason to give corporate entities the right to use people’s likenesses after they’re dead for free just because they’re dead. The onus should not be placed on the person to preemptively take legal action to block a corporation from exploiting their likeness for profit after they’re dead the onus should be placed on the corporation to negotiate a contract to use the person’s likeness posthumously while that person is still alive. Why should studios gain the right to profit off of a deceased person just because they can? If a corporate entity wants the rights to a person’s likeness or voice posthumously then they need to obtain those rights from the person while they are alive and if they fail to do so they should not be gifted those rights just because an arbitrary amount of time has passed.

What is the purpose of an arbitrary waiting period for corporations to gain the right to profit off of a deceased person? What is the difference between a person being dead for a day or a year or a decade or a century? A person doesn’t become more dead. The time period suggested in the OP is 30 years, why? Why is it wrong for a corporation to profit from the exploitation of a deceased person for 29 years 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds but it’s suddenly ok to do it after the clock strikes midnight and 30 years have passed? Why should we gift corporations with a right to profit off of someone without permission or compensation just because they can since the person is deceased? Being able to do something shouldn’t automatically convey the right to do so.

Prestor Jon wrote:
The actors don’t even need to be dead. There are videos up on YouTube that show how people can modify scenes from the Solo movie to put Harrison Ford’s face overlaid on Alden Ehrenreich’s face. The technology exists to do it and Disney owns all the footage of Ford from the original trilogy, they own the rights to the Han Solo character. Disney has the ability to cast a no name actor to do the physical acting while using the footage they had from the previous movies to put Ford’s face in the movie that was the origin story of a character they owned. If Disney has decided to do that would they have needed Ford’s permission? Lucasfilm didn’t need to get the actor’s permission to release the new revised original trilogy. Warner Bros doesn’t need to get Ford’s permission every time they release a new version of Blade Runner.

The situation is governed by contract, so it depends entirely on the wording of the document(s). Pacta sunt servanda, innit?

IIRC, Gladiator used digital footage of Oliver Reed to finish up, way back in the dark, dark, dark days of '02, 'cause he rather inconveniently died during filming. Few people cared.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The actors don’t even need to be dead. There are videos up on YouTube that show how people can modify scenes from the Solo movie to put Harrison Ford’s face overlaid on Alden Ehrenreich’s face. The technology exists to do it and Disney owns all the footage of Ford from the original trilogy, they own the rights to the Han Solo character. Disney has the ability to cast a no name actor to do the physical acting while using the footage they had from the previous movies to put Ford’s face in the movie that was the origin story of a character they owned. If Disney has decided to do that would they have needed Ford’s permission? Lucasfilm didn’t need to get the actor’s permission to release the new revised original trilogy. Warner Bros doesn’t need to get Ford’s permission every time they release a new version of Blade Runner.

The situation is governed by contract, so it depends entirely on the wording of the document(s). Pacta sunt servanda, innit?

IIRC, Gladiator used digital footage of Oliver Reed to finish up, way back in the dark, dark, dark days of '02, 'cause he rather inconveniently died during filming. Few people cared.

Using existing footage to digitize an actor’s likeness to complete scenes in a film that the actor had already agreed to act in would likely not be a problem because there was already a negotiated contract for the actor to be in the film. The crux of this issue is whether or not it would be legal and/or ethical to use a digitized likeness of Oliver Reed in the creation of a new film, ie a prequel to Gladiator, and profit off that film without first obtaining consent from Reed or his estate. Reed has already agreed to be in the film and was paid to be in the film and was actively participating in the filming so why would his sudden death revoke his consent to have his digital likeness be in more scenes of the film? It wouldn’t so it’s no big deal.

Again, it's contractual. What does "the actor" mean? His corporeal presence? His voice? His likeness?

What does "the film" mean? Can the studio go all Lucas and randomly insert (nonsensical) new shots into it in, say, eighty years time? Is that still "the film"? What if they shoot it and then totally re-cut everything to make it tell a different story. Still "the film"?

You're pre-supposing the existence of such a clause in one case and arbitrarily denying it in the other and in truth without being privy to the documents, you just don't know.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Again, it's contractual. What does "the actor" mean? His corporeal presence? His voice? His likeness?

What does "the film" mean? Can the studio go all Lucas and randomly insert (nonsensical) new shots into it in, say, eighty years time? Is that still "the film"? What if they shoot it and then totally re-cut everything to make it tell a different story. Still "the film"?

You're pre-supposing the existence of such a clause in one case and arbitrarily denying it in the other and in truth without being privy to the documents, you just don't know.

I’m only presupposing that an actor’s unexpected death during the filming of a movie wouldn’t create a legal impediment to the studio using a digitized replication of the actor from fulfilling the actor’s agreed upon contractual obligations for the film. In the past the actor’s death would be an insurmountable obstacle for the studio’s completion of the film but now technology can allow a deceased actor to continue to participate in the filming and fulfill contractual obligations. If the studio can fulfill the agreed upon contract with the digitized actor why would anything/one prevent them from doing so?

In the other mentioned instances I am saying that a negotiated contract should be in place anytime a studio wants to create a new film or album with a performer because corporations don’t inherently have the right to profit off of individual performers without their contracted consent even if they are dead. Regardless of my personal knowledge of any contracts the principle I am advocating is solid, without a negotiated contract a studio doesn’t have the right to profit from the creation of new products utilizing the likeness/voice/presence of a deceased person.

No, it's not.

You're drawing a distinction without providing a difference and still merely assuming that the clause exists in one case and arbitrarily not in the other.

They don't have an inherent right though, you're quite correct. They will almost always have a contractual right, though.

Unless you're airing some previously unknown (to me, at least) objection to Johnny Cash's American... albums, or any of the endless cash-grab Beatles/Elvis albums that have been released, without "negotiated" "contracted consent" in your version of events.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
No, it's not.

You're drawing a distinction without providing a difference and still merely assuming that the clause exists in one case and arbitrarily not in the other.

They don't have an inherent right though, you're quite correct. They will almost always have a contractual right, though.

Unless you're airing some previously unknown (to me, at least) objection to Johnny Cash's American... albums, or any of the endless cash-grab Beatles/Elvis albums that have been released, without "negotiated" "contracted consent" in your version of events.

My version of events? Johnny Cash made the American Recordings album with Rick Rubin under a negotiated contract with Rubin’s label in 1993 and it was released in 1994, while Cash was alive. The posthumous release of previously unreleased songs would be dependent upon ownership of those songs. There’s a multitude of examples of bands/musicians fighting with record labels over ownership of recordings. Musicians typically create albums for record labels while under contract so any surplus of songs that don’t get released would belong to whomever the contract specified and if that’s the label then the label can release the songs at a later date or never at all, whatever they choose. A deceased musician can’t alter the preexisting contract terms, they’re dead.

You keep making apples to oranges comprising here. The issue is not who has ownership rights over products created while actors or musicians were alive and able to freely contract their labor under negotiated terms, the issue is the morality, ethics and legality of creating new products with deceased actors and musicians who cannot consent to new contracts to produce new material because they are dead.

Disney owns Star Wars. They made Rogue One and they wanted to include a final scene with the Princess Leia character in it. In order to do so they superimposed a digital copy of young Carrie Fisher’s face from the original trilogy onto another actress’ body. This was done while Fisher was alive and her consent to do could be obtained if it was legally required for Disney to obtain it. Now Carrie Fisher is deceased. Disney still owns the rights to all the existing Star Wars movies as well as the right to create new Star Wars movies. If Disney wants to make more Star Wars films with the Princess Leia character in them can they use digitized versions of Carrie Fisher’s likeness to do so if they haven’t already negotiated a right to do so with Carrie Fisher when she was still alive? If Disney hasn’t already secured the rights to using Fisher’s likeness during the time she was alive to agree to such a contract can Disney use her likeness without obtaining any consent to do so or paying anyone compensation for such usage of her likeness? If Disney is required to obtain consent how can they do so if Fisher is deceased? If Fisher has t preemptively established some form of estate to manager her ability to participate in the creation of new films posthumously with the aid of current technology who would have the right to posthumously create such an estate on her behalf?

 Yodhrin wrote:

The point is that once they are dead, and after a fair period to allow their immediate family to work through their grief...why should anyone care what the studio or anyone else does with them? The dead actor/musician certainly doesn't, since they're dead.

You can keep restating this, but it doesn't stop lots and lots of people disagreeing with you. Many, many people care what happens to them, their name, their reputation, how they're remembered and understood and so on. They don't actively care when they're deceased, but why should that alter anything? People write wills and make plans for their funerals specifically because they care what happens to them and their things after they die. We don't dismiss them out of hand (for the most part).

I presume we'll get to a point quite soon where individuals working in visual media will have posthumous uses of their image in new media dealt with in contracts, the problem, for me, is in utilising images of people who could not foresee, and therefore could not consent to, new performances being generated.

nfe wrote:

You can keep restating this, but it doesn't stop lots and lots of people disagreeing with you.

What I think is puzzling some people here to a considerable degree is why those people you mention only disagree when CGI specifically is involved, and otherwise don't give two figs. I already mentioned the Amy Winehouse lookalike porno flick earlier on; yet there's no rally of friends or fans decrying it should be made illegal. There are many terrible Elvis impersonators, and they're actively encouraged rather than repressed. To accept that people disagreed on ethical principle, we'd need them to be equally outraged at the above examples for consistency. But they're not. So it can't be that.

This is consequently far more to do, I think, with the 'Ew, uncomfortable new technology' feeling; than it is any ethical question relating to replicating or profiting from a dead person's conceptual image. The ramifications of what technology is capable of often scares people; it's why we get many reactionary behaviours from anti-vaxxers on up. The idea that you could die and yet your likeness could be whored out for profit over the next millennia is an evocative one. The fact that dead people are already treated like that by contemporary society is irrelevant, it's the fact that this technology makes people come face to face with the concept in a new and startling way. That's what drums up the feeling of moral uncertainty.

Give it fifty years and wait for it to become old hat and covered by standard IP contracts though? After that, nobody will care. At least, not until the potential for making robot replica sexbots of celebrities happens. Then the same conversation will roll around again and follow the same cycle.

What will be really fun is when biotechnology reaches the point where they can make you look like whoever you want. After that, who's to say Audrey Hepburn's 'image' is exclusively hers, and doesn't equally belong to the thousands of other women bearing similar to identical faces? Or indeed, that of any celebrity, living or dead?

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:

You can keep restating this, but it doesn't stop lots and lots of people disagreeing with you.

What I think is puzzling some people here to a considerable degree is why those people you mention only disagree when CGI specifically is involved, and otherwise don't give two figs. I already mentioned the Amy Winehouse lookalike porno flick earlier on; yet there's no rally of friends or fans decrying it should be made illegal. There are many terrible Elvis impersonators, and they're actively encouraged rather than repressed. To accept that people disagreed on ethical principle, we'd need them to be equally outraged at the above examples for consistency. But they're not. So it can't be that.

First up, I didn't allude to people who object to this specifically. I alluded to people who care very much about their person (physical AND conceptual) after they die. Several claims have been made that a person's feelings on what happens to them and their image cease to be relevant at the point of death. I was simply noting that as it goes, a great many people care quite a lot what happens to them even when they obviously stop taking an active interest.

Second, I object to any use of performances or images of an individual to generate a new performance by that individual without their consent. To me, this is ethically distinct from a copycat performance, cosplay, or anything where a third party performs as the individual, or as a character that they portrayed, as there is no exploitation of the real individual. The CGI part is irrelevant, it is only relevant as it is the first, and so far only, technology that allows this to happen. Peter Cushing lookalike playing Tarkin? Fine. Peter Cushing lookalike as Grand Muff Diver in This Isn't Star Wars XXX? Fine. Digital/animatronic/whatever comes along Peter Cushing playing anyone in something that living Peter Cushing didn't agree to? Not fine.

.

nfe wrote:

First up, I didn't allude to people who object to this specifically. I alluded to people who care very much about their person (physical AND conceptual) after they die. Several claims have been made that a person's feelings on what happens to them and their image cease to be relevant at the point of death. I was simply noting that as it goes, a great many people care quite a lot what happens to them even when they obviously stop taking an active interest.

In that case, I apologise; I thought you meant that people were disagreeing with Yod generally, not referring to the specific actors themselves.

My point does however, remain salient to the discussion at large on that basis.

Second, I object to any use of performances or images of an individual to generate a new performance by that individual without their consent. To me, this is ethically distinct from a copycat performance, cosplay, or anything where a third party performs as the individual, or as a character that they portrayed, as there is no exploitation of the real individual. The CGI part is irrelevant, it is only relevant as it is the first, and so far only, technology that allows this to happen. Peter Cushing lookalike playing Tarkin? Fine. Peter Cushing lookalike as Grand Muff Diver in This Isn't Star Wars XXX? Fine. Digital/animatronic/whatever comes along Peter Cushing playing anyone in something that living Peter Cushing didn't agree to? Not fine.
.

This is an interesting viewpoint, although I'm not sure I agree with the 'ethical connotations'. If I'm using a cgi image of a person in a role who died a long time ago, had nothing to do with my series, and they had zero input into the performance; what makes it them as opposed to just a digital marionette that looks like them? To spitball an example, say that I decide to run a 'Famous WW2 persons in a Friends style sitcom' show. According to your perspective, you'd have an ethical issue with that however I cast it, so long as I don't have a third party actively performing. So if I use puppets, or really good animatronic robots, for example, I'm committing an ethical faux pas in your eyes? Since the CGI is irrelevant, and all.

I suppose you could further qualify, 'No, I only count it if the thing performing as them isn't alive and is visually identical in every regard', but then we're reaching a point where you're effectively saying 'I only count it if it's CGI' for all intents and purposes. Leastways, until robot facial animations get better. And even that further qualification still doesn't solve things; because it doesn't explain why it's only unethical when non-human entities perform, account for, why it's okay for those non-human entities to allow me to exploit the dead person's image, and several other variations depending on how you try and define all these further qualifications (just how identical does identical need to be? etcetc). Which frankly, means we've walked the 'death by a thousand qualifications' route in terms of ethics ('Murder is only bad if it happens in house on a Friday night when you're wearing a green shirt', etc). Which is a perfectly valid viewpoint to have, morality being subjective and all. But I'm not sure it's something I'd base a law or more general ethical position from.

 Ketara wrote:


If I'm using a cgi image of a person in a role who died a long time ago, had nothing to do with my series, and they had zero input into the performance; what makes it them as opposed to just a digital marionette that looks like them?

The source and the intent. If you're reconstructing the original actor with the intention of them being indistinguishable (or as close to indistinguishable as you are capable) then it's a problem. I have no problem at all with one that is not meant to fool the audience (when I say fool I don't mean that you are going to publicise it as a long lost Cushing performance or that Elvis isn't really dead, I just mean that it is unknowable to a viewer without prior knowledge).

To spitball an example, say that I decide to run a 'Famous WW2 persons in a Friends style sitcom' show. According to your perspective, you'd have an ethical issue with that however I cast it, so long as I don't have a third party actively performing. So if I use puppets, or really good animatronic robots, for example, I'm committing an ethical faux pas in your eyes? Since the CGI is irrelevant, and all.

I think there are a few confused do/don't would/wouldn't etc in here. If I'm reading you correctly you are stating that I'd have a problem with your sitcom if the actors were artificial. If that is the correct reading, then no, that is not true. My problem is entirely restricted to efforts to create new performances by persons that are indistinguishable (or intended to be indistinguishable) from other legitimate performances by the same persons. If your puppet or animatronic is as good as that, there's a problem. I can see that point arriving one day with the latter, but I can't see it cropping up with puppets (though I guess this depends on the definition of puppet).

I suppose you could further qualify, 'No, I only count it if the thing performing as them isn't alive and is visually identical in every regard', but then we're reaching a point where you're effectively saying 'I only count it if it's CGI' for all intents and purposes. Leastways, until robot facial animations get better.

In practical terms, yes - but this is not because it's a problem with CGI. If I say that it is unethical to put humans in space that is not me taking issue with rocket fuel just because it's the only medium that allows the problem to occur at the moment (I think - maybe I'm out of date, but you get my meaning).

And that further qualification still doesn't explain why it's only unethical when non-human entities perform,

Because there is a distinction between an employing an actor to pretend to be someone, and coopting performances by that someone to construct a new performance indistinguishable from genuine performances by that same someone. I except that in terms of goal these things can be similar, or the same, especially in the case of an Elvis impersonator, for example, where the intention is to indistinguishable from Elvis, but I believe there is an important difference between mimicking a performance and an attempt to actually reproduce the person and then have them perform.

account for why it's okay for those non-human entities to allow me to exploit the dead person's image

It isn't. That's my whole point. Not sure if there's a typo or omission here?

and several other variations depending on how you try and define all these further qualifications (just how identical does identical need to be? etcetc).

It's not 'how identical' that matters, it is the intention to make it indistinguishable, or as close as is technologically possible, from real performances. Faux-Cushing doesn't look very believable, but the intention was to make him so, and that's problematic, for me.

nfe wrote:
The source and the intent. If you're reconstructing the original actor with the intention of them being indistinguishable (or as close to indistinguishable as you are capable) then it's a problem. I have no problem at all with one that is not meant to fool the audience (when I say fool I don't mean that you are going to publicise it as a long lost Cushing performance or that Elvis isn't really dead, I just mean that it is unknowable to a viewer without prior knowledge).

I'm still not sure I follow this web. The original post specified that in this example, the person being recreated would have nothing to do with my series. Let's say 'Star Wars Episode IX' has a CGI Winston Churchill running around as 'Darth Kinnock' or whatever. Now I've taken a well know personality/image and using his face, invented a character. It has nothing in common with Churchill beyond his facial expression. Yet according to your example, the fact my character is now indisinguishable from old Churchill is an ethical problem.

Or to throw out another example; I know three girls who are unrelated. All very closely resemble each other (it's somewhat scary). If I CGI one of them, am I committing an ethical crime against the other two? I mean, it looks like all three of them and you'd have trouble telling them apart. What if I make an image of a person who isn't famous (with their permission), and they very closely resemble a person who is famous, what's the difference? You can say I'm duplicating the famous person, but I'm not. Faces aren't that unique.

The thing is, these images are expensive to make and animate. It's much easier to utilise one where the work has already been done. So you might see in the near future 'banks' of cgi faces; to be plopped and placed into any series as needed. What if a face in my bank resembles someone who becomes famous after my image was made? That's almost guaranteed to happen. Do I have to change it? These are just some immediate thoughts around trying to connect a specific facial appearance (something which changes for everyone over their lives), and the person/entity.

And that further qualification still doesn't explain why it's only unethical when non-human entities perform, I except that in terms of goal these things can be similar, or the same, especially in the case of an Elvis impersonator, for example, where the intention is to indistinguishable from Elvis, but I believe there is an important difference between mimicking a performance and an attempt to actually reproduce the person and then have them perform.
Because there is a distinction between an employing an actor to pretend to be someone, and coopting performances by that someone to construct a new performance indistinguishable from genuine performances by that same someone.

So even though our Elvis impersonator is deliberately exploiting Elvis' name, image, and achievements, that's ethically okay; whereas to have a CGI model do it isn't? Why is it fine for a bloke in a wig to profit, but not a guy sitting in front of a computer? Both are original 'performances'. None were undertaken by the actor.

account for why it's okay for those non-human entities to allow me to exploit the dead person's image

It isn't. That's my whole point. Not sure if there's a typo or omission here?

I was asking why you would consider it fine for one non-human entity (so, puppets for example) to profit from the image of a dead person, but not okay for a CGI image to do it. The line you seem to be taking is 'because one more closely visually resembles the other'. Which frankly, really shouldn't have anything to do with questions of profit and ethics. To take an example where impersonation=moral and legal crime, fraud is considered wrong regardless of the extent to which you've gone to dress up as someone, you know?

It's not 'how identical' that matters, it is the intention to make it indistinguishable, or as close as is technologically possible, from real performances. Faux-Cushing doesn't look very believable, but the intention was to make him so, and that's problematic, for me.

To recap (in case we're getting tangled, this is getting long!) Peter Cushing did not 'perform' for the latest SW movie, on account of being dead. It was not his 'performance'. The 'performance' is a new and original artwork/animation. However much it might superficially resemble Cushing's 'style' of acting, it's not his. We've no way of knowing just how he may or may not have played a part. He might have quirked an eyebrow where my model frowns, turned away rather than gazed into your eyes, and so on. Cushing's potential performance is unknowable, and my CGI is likely very different to it. And you've told me you've no problem with putting 'Faux-Cushing' into the Star Wars film. Which is cool.

What you said you'd have a problem with however, is if I now put Cushing into 'Indiana Jones IX: The Crown Jewel Heist' as the baddy.

But that's a character Cushing never acted. We've no idea how he'd have done it. It's in no way his 'performance'. So it's not his 'performance' which you're objecting to being stolen, because there's no 'performance' to steal or mimic. Any more than my CGI Churchill in 'WW2:Friends' is stealing Churchill's 'performance', or my CGI Michael Jackson in 'Star Wars: Han Solo becomes a celebrity from the Future'. Which means that what despite syaing it isn't the case, what you're objecting to is actually the 'image/appearance', not a 'performance'. And this immediately starts running into all the questions which I posited further up this post.

Disclaimer: I can sound a little brusque when I'm debating sometimes, so I just want to put that I'm having fun discussing it with you and not trying to 'win' as it were.
It's an interesting thing to consider!

So we're going to carry on simply presuming that consent exists in one case and not the other, even though not one of us is privy to the wording of the document(s) that govern these situations and not one of us knows, for a fact, whether consent actually exists in any of these situations.

Coolbeans. I'm out.

Grab your pearls and get a-clutching.

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:
The source and the intent. If you're reconstructing the original actor with the intention of them being indistinguishable (or as close to indistinguishable as you are capable) then it's a problem. I have no problem at all with one that is not meant to fool the audience (when I say fool I don't mean that you are going to publicise it as a long lost Cushing performance or that Elvis isn't really dead, I just mean that it is unknowable to a viewer without prior knowledge).

I'm still not sure I follow this web. The original post specified that in this example, the person being recreated would have nothing to do with my series. Let's say 'Star Wars Episode IX' has a CGI Winston Churchill running around as 'Darth Kinnock' or whatever. Now I've taken a well know personality/image and using his face, invented a character. It has nothing in common with Churchill beyond his facial expression. Yet according to your example, the fact my character is now indisinguishable from old Churchill is an ethical problem.

Yes, this would be problematic. It doesn't matter whether the individual being modelled is already associated with the art into which they are being placed - I'd say it's far more problematic if they aren't. You (with sufficient access to the individual during their lifetime) can at least have a bit of an educated guess as to their willingness to be associated with something they've done before depending on the positions they've taken on it at the time and since (though still not enough to go ahead and do it), but with something new you've far less to go on.

Or to throw out another example; I know three girls who are unrelated. All very closely resemble each other (it's somewhat scary). If I CGI one of them, am I committing an ethical crime against the other two? I mean, it looks like all three of them and you'd have trouble telling them apart. What if I make an image of a person who isn't famous (with their permission), and they very closely resemble a person who is famous, what's the difference? You can say I'm duplicating the famous person, but I'm not. Faces aren't that unique.

'Intent' covers this fine, I think. Accidental likenesses (in genuinely so) in appearance/behaviour etc is fine, just as it is in all art at all times. If you didn't mean to have Maggie play a character in your film but the digital actor is indistinguishable from her I don't think that's on you. If she thinks that you did mean it she can pursue you for doing it without permission, just as someone (depending on the territory and context) can pursue someone for presenting them in a film without their permission already.

The thing is, these images are expensive to make and animate. It's much easier to utilise one where the work has already been done. So you might see in the near future 'banks' of cgi faces; to be plopped and placed into any series as needed. What if a face in my bank resembles someone who becomes famous after my image was made? That's almost guaranteed to happen. Do I have to change it? These are just some immediate thoughts around trying to connect a specific facial appearance (something which changes for everyone over their lives), and the person/entity.

Again. 'intent' covers this fine.

So even though our Elvis impersonator is deliberately exploiting Elvis' name, image, and achievements, that's ethically okay; whereas to have a CGI model do it isn't? Why is it fine for a bloke in a wig to profit, but not a guy sitting in front of a computer? Both are original 'performances'. None were undertaken by the actor.

In one case a person is attempting to be like Elvis. In the other a person is attempting to make Elvis and then make him do things he did not consent to.

I was asking why you would consider it fine for one non-human entity (so, puppets for example) to profit from the image of a dead person, but not okay for a CGI image to do it. The line you seem to be taking is 'because one more closely visually resembles the other'. Which frankly, really shouldn't have anything to do with questions of profit and ethics. To take an example where impersonation=moral and legal crime, fraud is considered wrong regardless of the extent to which you've gone to dress up as someone, you know?

The line I'm taking is the problem begins where there is an effort made to make a facsimile that is indistinguishable from the real thing which can then be made to generate new performances.


It's not 'how identical' that matters, it is the intention to make it indistinguishable, or as close as is technologically possible, from real performances. Faux-Cushing doesn't look very believable, but the intention was to make him so, and that's problematic, for me.

To recap (in case we're getting tangled, this is getting long!) Peter Cushing did not 'perform' for the latest SW movie, on account of being dead. It was not his 'performance'. The 'performance' is a new and original artwork/animation. However much it might superficially resemble Cushing's 'style' of acting, it's not his. We've no way of knowing just how he may or may not have played a part. He might have quirked an eyebrow where my model frowns, turned away rather than gazed into your eyes, and so on. Cushing's potential performance is unknowable, and my CGI is likely very different to it. And you've told me you've no problem with putting 'Faux-Cushing' into the Star Wars film. Which is cool.

What you said you'd have a problem with however, is if I now put Cushing into 'Indiana Jones IX: The Crown Jewel Heist' as the baddy.

But that's a character Cushing never acted. We've no idea how he'd have done it. It's in no way his 'performance'. So it's not his 'performance' which you're objecting to being stolen, because there's no 'performance' to steal or mimic. Any more than my CGI Churchill in 'WW2:Friends' is stealing Churchill's 'performance', or my CGI Michael Jackson in 'Star Wars: Han Solo becomes a celebrity from the Future'. Which means that what despite syaing it isn't the case, what you're objecting to is actually the 'image/appearance', not a 'performance'. And this immediately starts running into all the questions which I posited further up this post.

I do and I don't object to Cushing in Star Wars. Or rather I think I've changed my mind over the course of the conversation. I think it's less problematic than it might be simply because it isn't very good and there's no chance of anyone mistaking it for the real thing, but since their animators intention was to make it indistinguishable, it still falls foul.

My position is not that any performance is being stolen - if it was actually being stolen, it's already easy to resolve legally. His living performances are owned and could be granted to persons by Cushing whilst alive. They're fine. If you own the rights to them, bash on (and similarly, if you're his family, bang on trying to get them back if they're acquired by someone you think he'd have objected to or whatever).

I object to new performances utilising their person.

Disclaimer: I can sound a little brusque when I'm debating sometimes, so I just want to put that I'm having fun discussing it with you and not trying to 'win' as it were.
It's an interesting thing to consider!

All good. Likewise!

It's certainly made me think further about where the distinction lies in a technical sense and if and how it might be defined in legislation. I wonder how it works for sports personalities in video games, actually - they're certainly licensed specifically within broader likeness rights (at least in the case of UK footballers, I know a couple agents and it's come up but never in detail).

nfe wrote:

Yes, this would be problematic. It doesn't matter whether the individual being modelled is already associated with the art into which they are being placed - I'd say it's far more problematic if they aren't. You (with sufficient access to the individual during their lifetime) can at least have a bit of an educated guess as to their willingness to be associated with something they've done before depending on the positions they've taken on it at the time and since (though still not enough to go ahead and do it), but with something new you've far less to go on.

The thing is though, where's the ethical problem? Who am I harming with my balding cigar smoking Darth Kinnock? Churchill's been dead for over half a decade. If I want to swipe his face and use it for something else, who's getting hurt? Am I going to end up in jail for defiling the intellectual property rights of a man who corked it back in 1965? Wouldn't that be an infinitely greater injustice/moral evil, to deprive me of my liberty or property for the wanton crime of digitally drawing an unlicensed animation of Churchill?

I suspect your answer here is that this is what expiry dates on copyright are made for; but just stop and think about what that would mean for a moment. It would that you'd be asking for a set of facial characteristics to be protected against the moral crime of duplication for profit by other people once the actor is dead; and the way you'd be doing that is by turning it into a commercial asset which can be sold, traded around, and generally exploited after their death. In other words, the cure is the crime. Sure, I'm certain some families would be very happy to continue profiting by the work of their forebears; but to profit off their grandaddy's face? Doesn't that just sound utterly absurd? And what's to stop them from licensing that 'face' out to anyone? Next thing you know we're looking at David Beckham condoms forty years after he corked it. To repeat, the protection (if legally possible) would literally magnify and make worse the spread of the 'moral' crime.

'Intent' covers this fine, I think. Accidental likenesses (in genuinely so) in appearance/behaviour etc is fine, just as it is in all art at all times. If you didn't mean to have Maggie play a character in your film but the digital actor is indistinguishable from her I don't think that's on you. If she thinks that you did mean it she can pursue you for doing it without permission, just as someone (depending on the territory and context) can pursue someone for presenting them in a film without their permission already....Again. 'intent' covers this fine.

Good luck proving beyond reasonable doubt in a court that a specific facial configuration was motivated by intent. 'Intent' is ridiculously hard to establish.

Furthermore, I (as an evil corporation) can just seek out someone who looks like any given famous person, pay them, and have a character in my digital bank that resembles the famous person to use forever. Win/win. If my digital Tony Blair lookalike is licensed from a person who genuinely looks like Tony Blair; my intent is irrelevant. Unless you're going to strip people who look like famous people of the right to commercialise themselves however they see fit, you can't begin to stop me. My Blair lookalike sells me his 'face' to do with whatever I will in perpetuity, I license it out, and suddenly Tony Blair breakfast cereals are the talk of the day. Et voila.

In one case a person is attempting to be like Elvis. In the other a person is attempting to make Elvis and then make him do things he did not consent to.

Or, one person is attempting to make himself into a version of Elvis that does whatever that person wants him to, and the animator is trying to represent Elvis as an art form. We can play with words which mean the same thing all day to make them sound worse or better, but the fact remains that the output is effectively identical and neither has any real reason to be separated off as 'morally un/acceptable'.

The line I'm taking is the problem begins where there is an effort made to make a facsimile that is indistinguishable from the real thing which can then be made to generate new performances...It's not 'how identical' that matters, it is the intention to make it indistinguishable, or as close as is technologically possible, from real performances. Faux-Cushing doesn't look very believable, but the intention was to make him so, and that's problematic, for me....I object to new performances utilising their person.

But as I keep trying to emphasise, it isn't Cushing's person. His face is not unique. He didn't act the part somebody animated. Empirically nothing connects the jumble of dots programmed into a machine to Peter Cushing. Just a vague cultural connection in your head. It's not a new 'performance utlising his person', it's a digital rendering of a human face; one that a man called Cushing in the past would have once shared across the ages with thousands of people. Cushing didn't 'invent' or 'create' his face (that goes to his genetics), he didn't participate in making any of the digital work designed to render this face, and he wouldn't have even remained looking the same throughout his life.

The idea of being able to copyright a configuration of facial features is, to me, the beginning of the end when it comes to corporations being able to own people. Being free to use that face, whether you profit from it or now, is what intrinsically keeps it out of 'slavery'. Anyone and everyone can do it. The minute that 'faces' become a protectable asset is the minute when it becomes standard contractual fare, lawyers come swanning in to hammer anyone who paints a picture of an actor their company hired, and people who had nothing to do with the person in question can really begin to monetise it.

That's when Peter Cushing's memory really will have been enslaved.

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:

Yes, this would be problematic. It doesn't matter whether the individual being modelled is already associated with the art into which they are being placed - I'd say it's far more problematic if they aren't. You (with sufficient access to the individual during their lifetime) can at least have a bit of an educated guess as to their willingness to be associated with something they've done before depending on the positions they've taken on it at the time and since (though still not enough to go ahead and do it), but with something new you've far less to go on.

The thing is though, where's the ethical problem? Who am I harming with my balding cigar smoking Darth Kinnock? Churchill's been dead for over half a decade. If I want to swipe his face and use it for something else, who's getting hurt? Am I going to end up in jail for defiling the intellectual property rights of a man who corked it back in 1965? Wouldn't that be an infinitely greater injustice/moral evil, to deprive me of my liberty or property for the wanton crime of digitally drawing an unlicensed animation of Churchill?

I suspect your answer here is that this is what expiry dates on copyright are made for; but just stop and think about what that would mean for a moment. It would that you'd be asking for a set of facial characteristics to be protected against the moral crime of duplication for profit by other people once the actor is dead; and the way you'd be doing that is by turning it into a commercial asset which can be sold, traded around, and generally exploited after their death. In other words, the cure is the crime. Sure, I'm certain some families would be very happy to continue profiting by the work of their forebears; but to profit off their grandaddy's face? Doesn't that just sound utterly absurd? And what's to stop them from licensing that 'face' out to anyone? Next thing you know we're looking at David Beckham condoms forty years after he corked it. To repeat, the protection (if legally possible) would literally magnify and make worse the spread of the 'moral' crime.

The person being harmed is Churchill. As I said before, and as lots of people also believe (not just stupid people with fantastical beliefs, as they were dismissed earlier), I do not restricted 'harm' to living individuals.

I would have no expiry dates on preventions of such use. Ever. I'm not sure where you're going with people profiting off of their forebears. How can they ever profit from something that they can't exploit? I'm not turning anything into a commercial asset. I'm opposing already-copyrighted and copyrightable assets being used to generate new ones.

'Intent' covers this fine, I think. Accidental likenesses (in genuinely so) in appearance/behaviour etc is fine, just as it is in all art at all times. If you didn't mean to have Maggie play a character in your film but the digital actor is indistinguishable from her I don't think that's on you. If she thinks that you did mean it she can pursue you for doing it without permission, just as someone (depending on the territory and context) can pursue someone for presenting them in a film without their permission already....Again. 'intent' covers this fine.

Good luck proving beyond reasonable doubt in a court that a specific facial configuration was motivated by intent. 'Intent' is ridiculously hard to establish.

I don't think this would be at all problematic because the extreme scenarios you've thought up are extraordinarily unlikely to arise. If you're doing it then you're doing it for commercial (possibly with a dose of nostalgia) reasons and that being successful requires people knowing about it. Putting Cushing in an unrelated film, never mentioning to anyone that you've done it, and pretending it's an accident when one of the sixteen people that watched the French House of Cards remake in 2026 says 'hey, Francois Urquhart looks loads like Peter Cushing!' doesn't achieve anything other than costing you money.

Furthermore, I (as an evil corporation) can just seek out someone who looks like any given famous person, pay them, and have a character in my digital bank that resembles the famous person to use forever. Win/win. If my digital Tony Blair lookalike is licensed from a person who genuinely looks like Tony Blair; my intent is irrelevant. Unless you're going to strip people who look like famous people of the right to commercialise themselves however they see fit, you can't begin to stop me. My Blair lookalike sells me his 'face' to do with whatever I will in perpetuity, I license it out, and suddenly Tony Blair breakfast cereals are the talk of the day. Et voila.

Yes. You could. You already can use expies to dodge likeness rights, but there isn't a huge market for merchandise with Photos of Mark Hamill lookalikes dressed as Luke Skywalker...

In any case, I don't think convoluted mechanisms to get around law makes law redundant, however. You know, or we might as well do away with tax.

In one case a person is attempting to be like Elvis. In the other a person is attempting to make Elvis and then make him do things he did not consent to.

Or, one person is attempting to make himself into a version of Elvis that does whatever that person wants him to, and the animator is trying to represent Elvis as an art form. We can play with words which mean the same thing all day to make them sound worse or better, but the fact remains that the output is effectively identical and neither has any real reason to be separated off as 'morally un/acceptable'.

I've already conceded that the nailing this down in language is difficult, and discerning the limit in sufficiently clear terms for legislation is problematic. I'm not a lawyer.

The line I'm taking is the problem begins where there is an effort made to make a facsimile that is indistinguishable from the real thing which can then be made to generate new performances...It's not 'how identical' that matters, it is the intention to make it indistinguishable, or as close as is technologically possible, from real performances. Faux-Cushing doesn't look very believable, but the intention was to make him so, and that's problematic, for me....I object to new performances utilising their person.

But as I keep trying to emphasise, it isn't Cushing's person. His face is not unique. He didn't act the part somebody animated. Empirically nothing connects the jumble of dots programmed into a machine to Peter Cushing. Just a vague cultural connection in your head. It's not a new 'performance utlising his person', it's a digital rendering of a human face; one that a man called Cushing in the past would have once shared across the ages with thousands of people. Cushing didn't 'invent' or 'create' his face (that goes to his genetics), he didn't participate in making any of the digital work designed to render this face, and he wouldn't have even remained looking the same throughout his life.

The idea of being able to copyright a configuration of facial features is, to me, the beginning of the end when it comes to corporations being able to own people. Being free to use that face, whether you profit from it or now, is what intrinsically keeps it out of 'slavery'. Anyone and everyone can do it. The minute that 'faces' become a protectable asset is the minute when it becomes standard contractual fare, lawyers come swanning in to hammer anyone who paints a picture of an actor their company hired, and people who had nothing to do with the person in question can really begin to monetise it.

That's when Peter Cushing's memory really will have been enslaved.

This answers this last quote, but I think is essentially the TL/DR version of the whole thing:

Hang on hang on. At this point I feel you are arguing that something that is already legally protected is impossible to protect.

I was under the impression that we were arguing the point at which (if ever) ownership of likeness rights stop covering usage because 'likeness' becomes something far closer to, or indistinguishable from, the person and so should require further explicit consent from the individual. You now seem to be arguing that ownership of likeness rights is an unenforceable nonsense.

'Everyone' can't already do this. Whether or not Cushing had a million dopplegangers, you are already legally prevented from doing this without ownership of likeness rights and/or ownership of recorded performances and/or permission from his estate. My position is that these having any combination of these rights should not automatically confer the right to create new performances with them.

nfe wrote:

The person being harmed is Churchill. As I said before, and as lots of people also believe (not just stupid people with fantastical beliefs, as they were dismissed earlier), I do not restricted 'harm' to living individuals.

In your opinion. I don't agree with that. But that wasn't the point of my statement. I was throwing out a (newly raised) counter-argument in light of the fact that you thionk Chirchill is being 'harmed'. Namely, isn't it a far greater moral and ethical crime to restrict the liberty and property of a still living person in order to protect nothing more than the facial appearance (for that brief moment in time they had it) of someone long dead?

I don't think this would be at all problematic because the extreme scenarios you've thought up are extraordinarily unlikely to arise. If you're doing it then you're doing it for commercial (possibly with a dose of nostalgia) reasons and that being successful requires people knowing about it. Putting Cushing in an unrelated film, never mentioning to anyone that you've done it, and pretending it's an accident when one of the sixteen people that watched the French House of Cards remake in 2026 says 'hey, Francois Urquhart looks loads like Peter Cushing!' doesn't achieve anything other than costing you money.

The point we're looking into here is the future. Things like robotic likenesses will quite possibly be an issue there. Furthermore, given the current extreme cost of digitally animating someone, the concept of 'Character banks' is actually more likely to arise than not, I should venture. Dismissing them as 'extreme' isn't thinking it through. As the costs lower and more and more CGI models of the dead are made, it makes good commercial and financial sense to lease out those models, so as to maximise return on your financial investment. We've already got the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Peter Cushing. What if Netflix decides to make a CGI Christoper Lee for Saruman in their upcoming series? Suddenly, anyone who wants to make a Dracula film in fhirty years time might well decide to use that digital asset. Etcetc.

This is largely how things work in life. It's why people can code in things like Java, they're building on the more basic programming someone else already did. Scientists use experimental data from other people conducting similar experiments. Once those models are made, they exist, and re-using them costs a fraction. Trading in these CGI images is, from a financial perspective, more likely than not as time goes on. When we reach the point where it's cheaper to use them than actors, we'll have a whole other question to raise.

In one case a person is attempting to be like Elvis. In the other a person is attempting to make Elvis and then make him do things he did not consent to.

Or, one person is attempting to make himself into a version of Elvis that does whatever that person wants him to, and the animator is trying to represent Elvis as an art form. We can play with words which mean the same thing all day to make them sound worse or better, but the fact remains that the output is effectively identical and neither has any real reason to be separated off as 'morally un/acceptable'.

I've already conceded that the nailing this down in language is difficult, and discerning the limit in sufficiently clear terms for legislation is problematic. I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not talking in legislative terms for this one. My point is that you're labelling one thing as immoral for having the same consequence (i.e. exhibiting a 3d representation of a dead famous person as identical as you can get being profited from) as another thing that you're saying you don't have a problem with. And your only reason for doing is descriptive semantics.

It's inconsistent. If we deem an action morally bad (say, fraud), we don't re-define it as okay because someone is wearing a blue hat, or donates the money to charity. The reason we consider the action ethically questionable is because of the output, not the input. You might consider there are mitigating factors (say, doing it to save a life) which you'd excuse them for; but the action itself (fraud) remains unquestionably morally bad.

If you find CGI in this instance ethically wrong for the reasons stated, Elvis impersonators are also ethically wrong. If you're grasping instead to find a reason why they're not, and the best you can come up with is something to do with intent, it means that the rule you have laid down is not actually the thing you find ethically questionable. It's some other factor. It might be related or not, but this isn't it.

This answers this last quote, but I think is essentially the TL/DR version of the whole thing:

Hang on hang on. At this point I feel you are arguing that something that is already legally protected is impossible to protect.

I was under the impression that we were arguing the point at which (if ever) ownership of likeness rights stop covering usage because 'likeness' becomes something far closer to, or indistinguishable from, the person and so should require further explicit consent from the individual. You now seem to be arguing that ownership of likeness rights is an unenforceable nonsense.

'Everyone' can't already do this. Whether or not Cushing had a million dopplegangers, you are already legally prevented from doing this without ownership of likeness rights and/or ownership of recorded performances and/or permission from his estate. My position is that these having any combination of these rights should not automatically confer the right to create new performances with them.

Err... actually, Britain (my country) does not have specifically copyrightable likeness rights or legislation. We have a batch of privacy laws which have a similar effect for living people instead. And they don't cover the dead. I can't speak for other countries or moral objections to the subject at hand. But I'm referring to the specific ethical aspect you find questionable in relation to the laws of the country I'm currently residing in.

To restate it in light of the above, the point I am making is that if the ethical concern being raised (i.e. exhibiting a 3d representation of a dead famous person as identical as you can get being profited from) was rendered illegal in law here by making likenesses into something copyrightable past death? You'd defeat the entire point of doing it. You'd 'enslave' those dead likenesses and representations to commercial interests where they currently aren't.

Sorry, I don't have time to go through all of that at the minute, but re: likeness rights in the UK - no, we don't, in either English and Welsh law or Scots law, but both jurisdictions have passing off, which allows prosecution for unauthorised use of a name or image that implies endorsement - it's the reason that football games on sale in the UK can't freely stick Messi on the cover - and people have been successfully prosecuting cases in Scotland for using persons' images and names without permission since the 1800s.

Obviously likeness rights (or 'personality rights' or 'publicity rights') are far more developed in the US where most cases of this will be located.

nfe wrote:
Sorry, I don't have time to go through all of that at the minute, but re: likeness rights in the UK - no, we don't, in either English and Welsh law or Scots law, but both jurisdictions have passing off, which allows prosecution for unauthorised use of a name or image that implies endorsement - it's the reason that football games on sale in the UK can't freely stick Messi on the cover - and people have been successfully prosecuting cases in Scotland for using persons' images and names without permission since the 1800s.

Sure, but we're talking about dead people here, which UK law does not cover. That's the context of my statement in relation to your ethical concern ((i.e. exhibiting a 3d representation of a dead famous person as identical as you can get being profited from). We have minor stuff around defamation I think, but generally speaking, once you've corked it, your image is public use.

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:
Sorry, I don't have time to go through all of that at the minute, but re: likeness rights in the UK - no, we don't, in either English and Welsh law or Scots law, but both jurisdictions have passing off, which allows prosecution for unauthorised use of a name or image that implies endorsement - it's the reason that football games on sale in the UK can't freely stick Messi on the cover - and people have been successfully prosecuting cases in Scotland for using persons' images and names without permission since the 1800s.

Sure, but we're talking about dead people here, which UK law does not cover. That's the context of my statement in relation to your ethical concern ((i.e. exhibiting a 3d representation of a dead famous person as identical as you can get being profited from). We have minor stuff around defamation I think, but generally speaking, once you've corked it, your image is public use.

In 1986, Peter Seller's family successfully pursued filmmakers in the UK (due to membership of the EU and precedent in France) for using previously shot footage of him in a sixth Pink Panther film after he died in 1980.

Again, though, the overwhelming majority of this work is situated in the US where this is well-covered and easily litigated. Restricting discussion of an industry focussed in California, where legislation was specifically passed to protect the publicity rights of 'delebs' (dead celebrities), to UK precedent is pretty daft.

You know, in the end it would just be easier to "fabricate" a star from scratch.
It would then be a property.
Look at Gorillaz or Prozzak, just go a step further.

The AI pop-star has been a story line back in the days when cyberpunk was in vogue and in anime.
With autotune, you can pretty much make a blend of all the best features of an artist (like sampling did for rap) and market it.
Heck, the "artificial host" Max Headroom was a thing, mind that was life mimicking artificial.

As to all the public figures out there, much of their images are loose to the public with little or no controls, going the step further and piecing them together to a moving talking model is the logical step.
I think many fans will not be content to leave their idols dead to history, but to bring them back to life with the resources at hand: technicromancy.

I seem to remember running a MUD a long time ago and we had a bot called "The King" who wandered around and I think he got more code than anything else we made.
Everyone commented that they loved having him around he seemed like a live player to them, even saved a few of them, he was our best attempt at an ELIZA type code personality.
That was just text interaction, not even graphics.

So yeah, ghost slavery?
That IS funny since they almost always are not like the actual person, but always how we want them to be, the character they presented then, now.

I see the new Avengers computer game uses a whole host of almost-lookalikes. I'm gonna have a wild guess that's a likeness rights issue moving from one medium to another. I wonder what the details are.

Virginia has become one of the first places to outlaw the sharing of computer-generated pornography known as deepfakes.

The US state has done so by amending an existing law which criminalised so-called revenge porn - the malicious sharing of explicit photos or videos without the victim's consent.

It now makes clear that the category includes "falsely-created" material.

Article continues at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48839758

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Autotune sucks unless you always want to sound like that terrible Cher song. Melodyne FTW.

I don't get why anyone here is complaining about a little recreational necromancy. It's not like we're digging up your dead grandmothers to make tasteful interior decorations.

Ed Gein likes this