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IMHO We really need to get a handle on something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general. At the moment companies (especially social ne

IMHO We really need to get a handle on something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general. At the moment companies (especially social networks) can do so much stuff with the likenesses of total strangers with zero oversight.

mc32 9y ago
Yep, totally agree. People should have control over their likeness, in a common sense way.
- toyg 9y ago
  Oh hell no. "By wearing the same hat as my client, the defendant is clearly trying to profit from his likeness with my client."
  - mc32 9y ago
    Is that a common sense interpretation?
PeterisP 9y ago
How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a licence from his estate? Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that and centuries of weird edge cases. I don't see a radical difference brought in by technology here. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is.
- mc32 9y ago
  Typically, as it currently, celebrities are treated differently, so your Elvis and MJ impersonators should be okay. In any case, this is more narrow in that its focus is on pornographic representations of regular people (a la revenge porn).
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that Right of publicity / personality rights are actually a fairly actively evolving area of law (and one with considerable variation between jurisdictions, even with the US), not an area of settled consensus.
- gamblor956 9y ago
  How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? Actually, the way the law currently works...they might (to avoid one or more tort cases for invasion of privacy, defamation, and/or publicity rights). Studios will rename characters in biopics if they can't secure rights to the person the character was based on. Like all things in the law, it is a matter of context. A biopic or other media "based on a true story" may require the permission of the people portrayed in it. A satire generally would not...The law is complicated like that. Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a license from his estate? Elvis is dead...The publicity rights of the dead are generally minimal and the invasion of privacy rights nonexistent...Also, the Elvis estate is generally okay with impersonators because for the most part they don't harm (i.e., defame) his image. They have gone after impersonators who they believed misappropriated Elvis' image for defamatory purposes. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is. Under the current law, that is several torts: Invasion of privacy, publicity rights, and defamation...
  - jasode 9y ago
    >Studios will rename characters in biopics if they can't secure rights to the person the character was based on. What circumstances would require a film production to ask permission of a real person before an actor could portray him? E.g. The film "The Social Network" didn't ask Mark Z for permission to portray him in an unflattering way: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/how-can-a-studio-make-a-biographic-film-like-the-social-network https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/how-can-a-st...
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      IMHO the distinction is that situation the events must be true. The person can't prevent you from portraying the facts, but if you wan't to take some "artistic liberty" about what happened, then you'd better either get their permission or change their name.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  > How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? I would certainly bloody hope they need permission. You have the usual caveats regarding the public interest for things, but I mean, one could argue a director should at least have one face to face conversation with someone they're including in a movie. > Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a licence from his estate? I think it's super creepy how widespread and how effectively public domain Elvis' image, act, and etc. is. He's been impersonated, lampooned, parodied, etc. so many times over. I mean you can't deny his cultural impact, but I don't know. I find it unsettling. > Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that and centuries of weird edge cases. I don't see a radical difference brought in by technology here. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is. More to the point: I'm not talking about impersonation, I'm talking about the use of one's likeness for personal, commercial, or illicit purpose without that individual's knowledge or consent, and frankly I find HN's overall response to this a little alarming. It seems (though this admittedly small and totally not even remotely scientific sample) that the tech-inclined don't seem to care much for privacy rights when it stops them from doing objectively cool things.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> We really need to get a handle on something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general. While the details may need tweaked, many jurisdictions already have “something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general”, under the name “personality rights” or “right of publicity”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  "Many jurisdictions" =/= "all jurisdictions", and in our increasingly non-local economic systems, laws that vary by area are problematic and often go unenforced.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > in our increasingly non-local economic systems, laws that vary by area are problematic and often go unenforced. More often, “in our increasingly non-local economic systems”, laws (especially civil laws, where the complaining party chooses whether and where to pursue violations) that vary by area are effectively enforced at the level of the most favorable (to the complaining party) regime available, rather than being unenforced.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      If you're a corporation that can afford that kind of thing, sure. Joe Everyman has little to no recourse.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        Joe Everyman has as much access to private actions and government support from his own jurisdiction as ever, and government agencies have often shown themselves willing to conduct enforcement action against foreign-based actors. Sure, the poor often have less be edit from the laws on the books than those with more resources for advocacy, but that's a near universal constant that's orthogonal to the issues raised in the thread.
gamblor956 9y ago
We've actually had this as part of the US legal system since at least the rise of Hollywood... The reason social networks and other apps can get away with it is because you agree to let them use images of you posted to the network for commercial purposes as part of the Terms of Service you agree to when you use the service. In the absence of that provision in a ToS, you would have a very valid claim for appropriation of image if a social network used a picture of you. These TOSs do not extend to other pictures of you. Thus, for example, Facebook couldn't run a commercial with a picture of you that was posted to Twitter but not Facebook.
everdev 9y ago
I thought you had to give consent to have your likeness used? Isn't that why people's faces are blurred out in videos sometimes? And athletes certainly have recourse if their likeness is used without consent, so I'd imagine that applies to the rest of us.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  laws vary by state.

mc32 9y ago

Yep, totally agree. People should have control over their likeness, in a common sense way.

toyg 9y ago
Oh hell no. "By wearing the same hat as my client, the defendant is clearly trying to profit from his likeness with my client."
- mc32 9y ago
  Is that a common sense interpretation?

PeterisP 9y ago

How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a licence from his estate? Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that and centuries of weird edge cases. I don't see a radical difference brought in by technology here. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is.

mc32 9y ago
Typically, as it currently, celebrities are treated differently, so your Elvis and MJ impersonators should be okay. In any case, this is more narrow in that its focus is on pornographic representations of regular people (a la revenge porn).
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that Right of publicity / personality rights are actually a fairly actively evolving area of law (and one with considerable variation between jurisdictions, even with the US), not an area of settled consensus.
gamblor956 9y ago
How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? Actually, the way the law currently works...they might (to avoid one or more tort cases for invasion of privacy, defamation, and/or publicity rights). Studios will rename characters in biopics if they can't secure rights to the person the character was based on. Like all things in the law, it is a matter of context. A biopic or other media "based on a true story" may require the permission of the people portrayed in it. A satire generally would not...The law is complicated like that. Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a license from his estate? Elvis is dead...The publicity rights of the dead are generally minimal and the invasion of privacy rights nonexistent...Also, the Elvis estate is generally okay with impersonators because for the most part they don't harm (i.e., defame) his image. They have gone after impersonators who they believed misappropriated Elvis' image for defamatory purposes. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is. Under the current law, that is several torts: Invasion of privacy, publicity rights, and defamation...
- jasode 9y ago
  >Studios will rename characters in biopics if they can't secure rights to the person the character was based on. What circumstances would require a film production to ask permission of a real person before an actor could portray him? E.g. The film "The Social Network" didn't ask Mark Z for permission to portray him in an unflattering way: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/how-can-a-studio-make-a-biographic-film-like-the-social-network https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/how-can-a-st...
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    IMHO the distinction is that situation the events must be true. The person can't prevent you from portraying the facts, but if you wan't to take some "artistic liberty" about what happened, then you'd better either get their permission or change their name.
FussyZeus 9y ago
> How about actors playing the roles of (still living) real people in theatre and movies? Would they suddenly need permission? I would certainly bloody hope they need permission. You have the usual caveats regarding the public interest for things, but I mean, one could argue a director should at least have one face to face conversation with someone they're including in a movie. > Should the (many!) Elvis impersonators need a licence from his estate? I think it's super creepy how widespread and how effectively public domain Elvis' image, act, and etc. is. He's been impersonated, lampooned, parodied, etc. so many times over. I mean you can't deny his cultural impact, but I don't know. I find it unsettling. > Impersonating others isn't a new issue, we already have a quite settled body of law about that and centuries of weird edge cases. I don't see a radical difference brought in by technology here. IMHO the treatment of making face-swapped porn videos (or distributing them, which is a quite different case) should be the same as the currently established treatment of painting (or distributing) a realistic painting of someone you know in a pornographic pose - whatever that treatment is. More to the point: I'm not talking about impersonation, I'm talking about the use of one's likeness for personal, commercial, or illicit purpose without that individual's knowledge or consent, and frankly I find HN's overall response to this a little alarming. It seems (though this admittedly small and totally not even remotely scientific sample) that the tech-inclined don't seem to care much for privacy rights when it stops them from doing objectively cool things.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> We really need to get a handle on something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general. While the details may need tweaked, many jurisdictions already have “something akin to copyright to cover our own faces and identity in general”, under the name “personality rights” or “right of publicity”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

FussyZeus 9y ago
"Many jurisdictions" =/= "all jurisdictions", and in our increasingly non-local economic systems, laws that vary by area are problematic and often go unenforced.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > in our increasingly non-local economic systems, laws that vary by area are problematic and often go unenforced. More often, “in our increasingly non-local economic systems”, laws (especially civil laws, where the complaining party chooses whether and where to pursue violations) that vary by area are effectively enforced at the level of the most favorable (to the complaining party) regime available, rather than being unenforced.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    If you're a corporation that can afford that kind of thing, sure. Joe Everyman has little to no recourse.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Joe Everyman has as much access to private actions and government support from his own jurisdiction as ever, and government agencies have often shown themselves willing to conduct enforcement action against foreign-based actors. Sure, the poor often have less be edit from the laws on the books than those with more resources for advocacy, but that's a near universal constant that's orthogonal to the issues raised in the thread.

gamblor956 9y ago

We've actually had this as part of the US legal system since at least the rise of Hollywood... The reason social networks and other apps can get away with it is because you agree to let them use images of you posted to the network for commercial purposes as part of the Terms of Service you agree to when you use the service. In the absence of that provision in a ToS, you would have a very valid claim for appropriation of image if a social network used a picture of you. These TOSs do not extend to other pictures of you. Thus, for example, Facebook couldn't run a commercial with a picture of you that was posted to Twitter but not Facebook.

everdev 9y ago

I thought you had to give consent to have your likeness used? Isn't that why people's faces are blurred out in videos sometimes? And athletes certainly have recourse if their likeness is used without consent, so I'd imagine that applies to the rest of us.

oculusthrift 9y ago
laws vary by state.