alt Hacker NewsI think this is great. It’s similar to the rights that brands have.
Imagine I drew a Coca Cola logo in paint. Now I own the copyright to my picture of the Coca Cola logo. Next I stick it on my new brand of soda. That’s not allowed.
Coca-cola own rights to their logo. You should own rights to your face and voice.
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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.
It's kind of wild that brands have had more robust protections than actual people when it comes to identity
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.
This is a bit of an unfortunate example because it mixes copyright law and trademark law, which are very different in their character.
I think your conclusion is correct, but the child comments mentioning fair use would not apply because fair use is a copyright concept, not a trademark concept. And I'm really only familiar with US laws, so I'm not even sure if fair use is a concept in Denmark or not. They have a different notion of copyright than we do in the US.
That said, I think Denmark did the wrong thing here. I think face and identity is much closer to a trademark than it is to something that is a created piece of artwork. Trademark law is a little bit narrower because it allows you to use the trademark to refer to the company, but it prohibits you from using the trademark to confuse customers about whether this is an authentic product. This feels quite analogous to the issue that Denmark is trying to address with the deep fakes, so I'm a little bit surprised on the copyright angle, since I can imagine a lot of legitimate uses for taking a picture of someone without needing their permission and distributing it. CCTVs, traffic cams, mug shots, police body cams, and the ever-increasing trend of recording in any situation that becomes tense or dangerous. Will a civilian be told by the cop that he's violating copyright because they want to film the interaction with the police? This reminds me of when cops would play Taylor Swift loudly in the background so that people couldn't post videos of the interaction on YouTube.