3 ms·

> Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure i

> Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure if its shared and claims to be of a named celebrity that must meet the bar, but how much alike the original person must it look like to become unethical? If a person finds a celebrity attractive and bases a fictitious character on them, is that a problem? What if the haircut is the same, or the eyes and nose are similar? If it goes to court, how personal can the defendant get to show discrepancies between the fake porn and the actual person? Don't get me wrong I really wish people wouldn't use tech for this kind of stupid shit. I just don't think we will ever be able to draw clear and predictable lines around what does and does not break the law.

allturtles 3y ago
What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
- _heimdall 3y ago
  And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? As long as you can tell beforehand whether you're getting close to breaking the law this is fine. The closer you get to possibly breaking the law the more exculpatory evidence you should be collecting to present to a court. > To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation. Sure. So what's your alternative? No laws at all? Only laws that can be precisely defined in a completely non-ambiguous manner (good luck with that [1])? I favor making sure that people know about jury nullification prior to becoming jurors. And also favor elected courts (which exist in many jurisdictions). [1] - I argued elsewhere that even the Constitutional requirement that the President by 35 years old or older is highly ambiguous (as per how the length of a year is defined, leap years, sidereal years, age at running for office, election to office, or assumption of office, etcetera), but hasn't been adjudicated because we haven't had any edge cases. Genuinely non-ambiguous laws don't exist, because every term can be argued over.

allturtles 3y ago

What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

_heimdall 3y ago
And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? As long as you can tell beforehand whether you're getting close to breaking the law this is fine. The closer you get to possibly breaking the law the more exculpatory evidence you should be collecting to present to a court. > To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation. Sure. So what's your alternative? No laws at all? Only laws that can be precisely defined in a completely non-ambiguous manner (good luck with that [1])? I favor making sure that people know about jury nullification prior to becoming jurors. And also favor elected courts (which exist in many jurisdictions). [1] - I argued elsewhere that even the Constitutional requirement that the President by 35 years old or older is highly ambiguous (as per how the length of a year is defined, leap years, sidereal years, age at running for office, election to office, or assumption of office, etcetera), but hasn't been adjudicated because we haven't had any edge cases. Genuinely non-ambiguous laws don't exist, because every term can be argued over.