3 ms·

There might be a Streisand Effect to this. Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Sk

There might be a Streisand Effect to this. Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect.

dharmab 3y ago
> Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect Tom Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay for using a Tom Waits soundalike in a commercial.
- mc32 3y ago
  How do car dealers get away with using the voice of “ex-presidents” for their presidents’s day sales then? I mean, while not exactly the ex-presidents’s voices, they do mimic their voice styles and voice mannerisms. Typically ‘W’ and Clinton —though the ones for Lincoln and Washington is obviously imagined and presumably any rights would have expired.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    1) Political figures have less likeness rights than actors 2) Obvious mimicry and impressions are okay. No one thinks it really is W or Clinton. 3) They are local ads, and thus no one notices
- esperent 3y ago
  There's an important distinction here - these ads were impersonating Tom Waits himself. There's something called publicity rights that relates to a person's right to control their public likeness which is presumably what Waits sued over. Here, modders are impersonating a character played by a voice actor and the copyright on the character belongs to the game company, not the actor. Assuming the game company declines to enforce their copyright, it falls back to the actor to enforce their publicity rights. Which I'm not sure they can, since it's not them but rather a character they play. When modders hired soundalikes to extend a character, it was equivalent to finding a similar looking actor. Now, using AI, it's equivalent to using deepfake video. Legally, I assume there's a difference which might be important if the game company decided to sue the modders. But from the perspective of the voice actor, I don't think it matters. Their copyright isn't being infringed.

dharmab 3y ago

> Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect Tom Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay for using a Tom Waits soundalike in a commercial.

mc32 3y ago
How do car dealers get away with using the voice of “ex-presidents” for their presidents’s day sales then? I mean, while not exactly the ex-presidents’s voices, they do mimic their voice styles and voice mannerisms. Typically ‘W’ and Clinton —though the ones for Lincoln and Washington is obviously imagined and presumably any rights would have expired.
- HWR_14 3y ago
  1) Political figures have less likeness rights than actors 2) Obvious mimicry and impressions are okay. No one thinks it really is W or Clinton. 3) They are local ads, and thus no one notices
esperent 3y ago
There's an important distinction here - these ads were impersonating Tom Waits himself. There's something called publicity rights that relates to a person's right to control their public likeness which is presumably what Waits sued over. Here, modders are impersonating a character played by a voice actor and the copyright on the character belongs to the game company, not the actor. Assuming the game company declines to enforce their copyright, it falls back to the actor to enforce their publicity rights. Which I'm not sure they can, since it's not them but rather a character they play. When modders hired soundalikes to extend a character, it was equivalent to finding a similar looking actor. Now, using AI, it's equivalent to using deepfake video. Legally, I assume there's a difference which might be important if the game company decided to sue the modders. But from the perspective of the voice actor, I don't think it matters. Their copyright isn't being infringed.