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

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

> there IS no public domain footage of celebrities

But they're a commodity like anything else, and they/their agents have every right to try to make money out of it and pursue people trying to deprive them of that.

> What celebrities want additionally is economic rts

I think this shouldn't be limited to celebrities. Everyone should own the economic rights to representations of themselves - right down to their name/address being sold as part of a mailing list! ;)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

You do have that right already - under EC data protection law. but it's hard to enforce, especially when most spammers are based in countries which don't have DP law eg USA, KOrea, Russia.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I'm not thinking of privacy there, I'm thinking of other people using my details for financial gain - I want that money ;)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Interesting. That's pretty much what I proposed in Magnum Opus - which sank like lead balloon :-)