Danish Bill Proposes Using Copyright Law to Combat Deepfakes
Recently, a Danish Bill has been making headlines by addressing issues related to deepfake through a rather uncommon approach: copyright. As stated to The Guardian, the Danish Minister of Culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, explained that they “are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI.” According to CNN, the minister believes that the “proposed law would help protect artists, public figures, and ordinary people from digital identity theft.” Items 8, 10, and 19 of the proposal include some of the most substantive changes to the law. Among other measures, Item 8 proposes adding a new § 65(a), requiring the prior consent of performers and performing artists to digitally generate imitations of them and make these available to the public, establishing protection for a term of 50 years after their death. Item 10 introduces a new § 73(a), focusing on “realistic digitally generated imitations of a natural person’s personal, physical characteristics,” requiring prior consent from the person being imitated before such imitations can be made available to the public. This exclusive right would also last for 50 years after the death of the imitated person and would not apply to uses such as caricature, satire, parody, pastiche, criticism, or similar purposes. It could be argued that this approach is uncommon because several countries, including those in the European Union, already have laws regulating personality rights and, more specifically, personal data. Copyright is known for regulating the use of creative expressions of the human mind, not the image, voice, or likeness of a person when considered individually, i.e., outside the context of an artistic performance. According to CNN “Engel-Schmidt says he has secured cross-party support for the bill, and he believes it will be passed this fall.” A machine-translated version of the Proposal is below: Notes:
