> 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 th

> 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.