Presumably non fungible …

If you sell the copyright, does that mean you can no longer look like yourself?

Usually in Europe, there is no copyleft. Copyright can not be sold. Only the right of use.

You don't have copyright on your own likeness in the same way you have copyright on an original work. However, the law does provide protection for individuals to control how their name, image, likeness, and other identifying characteristics are used, particularly for commercial purposes. This area of law is known as the right of publicity.

https://rinckerlaw.com/name-image-and-likeness-how-to-protec...

You're taking a very ethnocentric view towards this. Most European cultures don't have the same legal culture that the US has.

Punitive damages are very rare or non-existent depending on the country and the loser of the case usually has to pay the winning party's legal fees. There just isn't the incentive to sue someone over something silly like what you've mentioned.

I don't think the law's aiming to copyright your existence like a trademark, but more to stop people from digitally cloning you without consent

That is how every law works. There's people specialized in handling collisions and conflicts.

It's also why the idea that "code is law" popular in certain circles was always misguided.

It's kind of wild that brands have had more robust protections than actual people when it comes to identity

But how would that work for news reporting? Imagine a politician doing something stupid in public. Should it not be possible to broadcast that if he disallows it?

How do you plan on handling dopplegangers? They looks extremely similar (if not twin-like), yet they should each own the rights to their image and features.

You must distinguish between copyright and trademark.

Andy Warhol drew images of Campbell's soup cans in paint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans

He controlled the copyright to that painting. That's transformative, and the result does not meaningfully affect Campbell's ability to trade.

Quoting that Wikipedia link: "Although Campbell's never pursued litigation against Warhol for his art, United States Supreme Court justices have stated that it is likely Warhol would have prevailed.", with two quotes from two Supreme Court cases.

The second such quote is from Neil Gorsuch: "Campbell's Soup seems to me an easy case because the purpose of the use for Andy Warhol was not to sell tomato soup in the supermarket...It was to induce a reaction from a viewer in a museum or in other settings."

On the other hand, were Warhol to stick his copyrighted images on a new brand of soup, that would violate trademark law as it would confuse buyers.

There is always outlier (i look like someone) in anything. However this universal approach is a win for the people.

The same problem applies to regular copyright. Different people will make similar, maybe even identical, works fairly often. So probably a similar solution? Not sure. The wrinkle being you can't exactly change your own features.

It works both ways. You’d have to find compromise.

I imagine both of you would have the power to license out your likeness.

Same situation as today: if you have a lookalike out there who does pornography, and somebody you know runs across it, they'll think it's you and not much you can do about that except explain.

Unfortunately, the law is already quite stupid around this.

There have been many cases where a company wanted to hire say, actor X to voice their commercial, actor refused, so they hired someone else with a nearly identical voice, the original actor sued and won(!!!!!) because apparently it's their "signature" voice.

I disagree because obviously that means the other person has no right to make money using their voice now, at no fault of their own?

But yeah I'd imagine you'd have the same problem here - you can't generate a picture of say, Brad Pitt even if you say well actually this isn't Brad Pitt, it's just a person who happens to look exactly like him(which is obviously entirely possible and could happen).

Person A will have the rights to their image, person B to theirs. If person A looks like person B, person B still has no say in what person A does with their image and vice versa. Seems obvious to me.

I guess you worry about stuff like person A looks like celebrity person B and sells their image for, say, frosty frootloop commercials. As long as A is not impersonating B, ie. claiming to be B, I can't see a problem. "Hi, my name is Troy McClure, you may know me for looking like Serena Williams." I guess it will be the decade of the doppelgänger agencies, like in Double Trouble ;) [1]

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087481/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_8...

The State does. The same State which now has an extra-power over its subjects.

co-oprative license?

Probably, okay until there's some conflict. Then, the lawyers will get paid some money to resolve it.

Win-win. For the lawyers.

Identical twins look different if you know them well.

To me #3 sort of looks similar, but everybody else is clearly not close to similar.

This reminds me of conspiracy theories about famous people having doubles.

This is very odd. Hardly any of them look alike let alone doppelgänger status...

There are indeed many people that look very similar, and that will only increase if the efforts to eradicate uniqueness and actual separated diversity are successful, but there is also a lesson in the basic concept of, similar is not same. A single wrinkle more or less or a shift in an angle, and it’s not you anymore. The whole concept of likeness is a spurious one at best, akin to how the aristocracy functioned in the past where e.g., the depiction of their profile on a coin was a means of control too.

I was just recently trying to find an associate from my past with an unfortunately common whole full name in his language and was rather surprised at how many of the people depicted online with his name looked extremely similar to him, but upon closer discernment were surely not him. How do you discern that a “deepfake” (what a dumb term) is similar to you and not just similar to anyone else?

Also, what if AI is just trained with images of you? The consequent image will similarly only be an inspiration of you, not you, not the same as even using images in an attempt to graft a very similar facial feature onto an image or map it into a video.

It is in fact also what artists do in physical medium, they look at something/someone and are inspired by it to create an illusion that gives the impression of similarity, but it is not that thing/person. Will this new law possibly make art illegal too because people have not thought this through?

On a digital screen, it is of course also not you at all, it is individual pixels that fool the mind or give an illusion. It is really a pernicious muddling of reality and logic we have allowed to emerge, where the impression of depiction is the property of someone even though it is not that person, but also only if it is the means for control, ie money. Mere peasants have no control over their image taken in public.

The Sphere in Vegas is another good example of this on a large scale, each “pixel” is roughly 6” apart from the other and about 2” in diameter, for all intents and purposes separate objects, each only projecting one array of colors in a matrix of individual LEDs. Up close it looks no different than a colored LED matrix, only when you stand sufficiently far away is your mind tricked into believing you see something that is not really there.

Frankly, these moves to “protect” are very much a direct assault on free expression and even may create unintended consequences if art exceptions do not apply anymore either. Is it now illegal for me to paint a nude, how about from an image that I took of someone? What about if I do it really well from my own memory? What about if I use a modeling tool to recreate such a nude as a digital 3D object from images or even memory? Is AI not also simply a tool? Or is it more?

That's not a new question: what if you photograph a sculpture?

In France we have a ‘right to the image’ where you have a right to stop someone taking your photo or having a photo of you published. People who contravene the rules can be punished with fines or more.

From Wikipedia: "Public figures can be photographed as part of their function or professional activity... A photograph of a public figure taken as part of his private life therefore still requires explicit authorization for publication. Thus, the Prime Minister cannot oppose a journalist photographing him at the exit of the Council of Ministers or during an official lunch, but he can prohibit the publication of photographs representing him at an event in his private life, such as a family reunion.”

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_à_l%27image_des_personne...

Another scenario: what if you wanted to change some features?

I don't know how to tell you this, but Denmark is a sovereign state and does not derive its interpretation and objectives of copyright from the US constitution.

You keep saying what "we" prefer, but I wasn't aware that everyone shared the same values around privacy. Some cultures take it much more seriously than others, often in ways you wouldn't expect if you're coming from e.g. the US.

> Will companies now need to license "the likeness" of people too?

They already do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

>While in the West people have no respect to other people

Big overgeneralization. Here in Germany the "Recht am Eigenen Bild" (literally right to your own image) has existed for decades, and similar to Japan publishing images of others has some pretty big limitations and without consent is usually restricted to places or persons of public interest. To the chagrin of Google Street view or Twitch streamers

> While in the West people have no respect to other people, and don't bother to blur anything. I think it would be better for everyone if you couldn't post photos of other people without their permission and if annoying Youtubers would go to jail.

Every burglars wet dream. I have no idea what crime is like in Japan but in EU this is not an option.

> When filming in the street, for example, for a street interview, TV typically blurs the faces of Japanese-looking people passing by (except for foreigners). While in the West people have no respect to other people,

Am I missing something or is this just plain racism? There are lots of japanese people who don't look japanese, foreigners who are permanent residents, and japanese-looking people that aren't japanese - how is it respectful to protect just a certain ethnic groups privacy?