I wish I could digitise my cats

[green_amber]

Pah - BA won't fly my cats to Southampton either.

Sigh...

In other news, I'm researching whether actors have rights in digitised virtual representations of themselves - like avatars in games like Second Life; or fully fledged characters, as in the film Skye Captain and the World of Tomorrow, where Laurence Olivier was digitally resurrected to play a wholly new scene some years after his death. 

Right now, Paul Newman and some other elder gods of the acting world are trying to get a Bill through in Connecticut which would stop studios doing stuff like this without their (or their estate's permission) ; not even parodies, eg, would be exempt. So no Steve Macqueen in a motorbike ad, no Olivier in a 40s pastiche film, no Marilyn Monroe or Tom Cruise in The Simpsons, eg, without appropriate consent (and, perhaps, payment for that). 

(Note that there are already restrictions on what you can do there. If a cartoon Tom Cruise declared in The Simpsons in a non-parodic fashion that he was gay as all get out, you can bet the writs would be flying before the end of the programme, for libel. So it's not as if even currently, we have total freedom to appropriate celebrity images.)

For once, I'm not sure quite what I feel about all this. I lean towards the angle that celebrities make enough out of being celebrities anyway without the right to control every single manifestation of their image. I also think that culture demands access to cultural icon appropriation. Eg, if I was making a digitised film about women and sex, I might well want to include a digital Madonna (the real one of course, would exceed my budget).  In the US, though, this opinion is already largely over ruled - most states do support image, or "publicity" rights. So given such rights, should they extend to digitised copies of actors? Just as the Elvis Presley estate can charge you in some states for putting Elvis on a tee shirt, should they be able to charge Pinewood for putting him virtually into a film?

And does it make a difference if the celebrity is dead or alive? if we're taking about someone's reputation, or their privacy, then traditionally rights  to sue end with death eg for libel/defamation actions. But if you're talking rights to make money, as with copyright, then usually your heirs inherit the rights for some fixed length of time - just as the Tolkien estate still control and get royalties from LOTR.

And what if the person digitised isn't a celebrity? What if they decide to include me or you in the new film as background "extras"? Why should celebrities get rights in their digital recreation and nonentities get none? And what defines a celebrity? Someone who can be recognised on the styeet, or someone "famous" for other stuff? Some scientists recently made an animatronic replica head of Philip K Dick, fed it with all his novels and gave it some not-so-crude AI so it could respond to questions in the style of PKD to some extent. Should PKD, or his estate, have the right to stop this? if so, why?

Anyone have strong feelings ?

Comments

[andrewducker]

A friend of mine was once stopped in the street by a guy with a camera while wandering in Glasgow on his day off, and had his photo taken.

About 3 years later it appeared in some newspaper, illustrating a story about people skiving off of work (I think - it was something derogatory, anyway).

When he talked to the people at the newspaper he was told they'd bought the image from an image archive, and that he had no rights.

This seemed somewhat odd to me...

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The Dick head is missing. Really.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Well, Tom Cruise did complain over a recent appearance in South Park in which he locked himself in Stan's closet and refused to "come out"; that particular show has been pulled from the UK run.

Leonard Nimoy was in dispute with Paramount circa 1978 regarding their licensing of the "Spock" image to Heiniken for billboard ads in the UK. It was only when the studio coughed up a substantial amount of cash (as per a clause in the contract they'd "forgotten about") that he agreed to appear in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I would offer to drive your cats down to Soton but my first available weekend is 30th September.

I reckon I could do it in around 10 hours. There's a spray you can buy from vets which is filled with some kind of pheromone that cats give off when they very happy and calm. On the advice of our vet , we sprayed their carry baskets with it when we drove our cats from Cambridge to Edinburgh and, after an hour of 'crying', they settled down and were fine for the rest of the trip.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Take the cats by train? If you go on-line and book ultra cheap first class seats you can take them with you. I find train conductors very sweet to the cats if you're in first class. when I took mine tio Gatwick this way, they didn't put up any of the howling they did in the car, but sat in their boxes on the table and stared out of the window, fascinated.

[zotz]

I don't have strong feelings on stars being protected from having their likeness used, but I think it's interesting that the likeness of Mickey Mouse is protected while that of Madge Monroe isn't. Where do intermediates stand - is Charlie Chaplin's tramp character protected?

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I don't think people have or should have infinite and perpetual moral rights to their image. I'm thinking of Harry Turtledove's alternate historical Ruled Britannia, featuring Will Shakespeare, action hero. When a person becomes a personality, especially a historical personality, they become part of our culture and should be free for use in further creation and fabulation. On the other side, when it is possible to digitally replicate an actor as an alternative to hiring them, I don't think this should be done without compensation. I feel the same way about industrial workers whose jobs are obsoleted by technology. Between these two extremes there is a lot of gray. People should have some moral rights to their work, especially while they live, but that doesn't mean people should have entitlements to a life of leisure while their digital counterparts work for them, simply because they were fortunate enough to be made celebrities.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I am something of a Copyright Nazi; I am not a great believer in "sharing" (often aka piracy), so I'm not coming to this from a neutral point of view ;)

Let's examine some use cases, all of them confined to material intended for public exhibition:

(1) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a living "celebrity" as part of another creative work. To me, if this work is shown in public, it's wrong regardless of whether the resultant work is for profit, not-for-profit, whatever. I don't give a toss if it's a derived work, a new work, or whatever.

(2) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a dead "celebrity", ditto. Also wrong - it's breach of copyright, and copyright is there for a purpose.

(3) Use of public-domain imagery of a living "celebrity". Fair game, as far as I'm concerned, within the framework of exisiting privacy/defamation/slander/libel laws. You might want to put a caption of "I SUCK COCKS IN HELL" over a picture of Madonna and post it as an advert on your local bus stop; she and her lawyers probably have a different opinion, and already have a legal framework for doing so.

(4) Use of public-domain footage of a dead "celebrity". Again, fair game, but if the estate/family/descendents of that person object, then go and have a fair fight.

(5) Parody/caricature/impersonation, using imagery clearly intended to mock a "celebrity" - no problem with this, existing legal frameworks clearly give sufficient protection through libel etc. laws.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things where I've got sympathy with the actor/whatever in not wanting to be screwed over, even after their death, by megacorps using them to sell stuff, but... it's also something that will be undoubtedly abused beyond all belief, as all forms of copyright have been lately. Given that, I tend to be 'screw the celebs. if they are alive, they can sue, if they are dead, who the fuck cares?'

[(Anonymous)]

i thought they had already covered this with the whole indicia of identity thing? :

Each individual has his own distinct persona made up of physical appearance (image or likeness), name, voice, signature and other recognisable elements, together the so called “indicia of identity”, which for the celebrated few immediately evoke in the mind of the general public that particular individual...The right of publicity is a right to raise an action either to prevent, or to seek subsequent compensation for the wrongful appropriation for commercial purposes of another’s persona without that person’s proper consent....or the consent of a third party which now exercises the right fot that individual, to whom it has either been assigned, or by whom it has been inherited.

Image, Persona and the Law
by Simon Smith