From: wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL (Will Martin)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re:  Photo of minor, etc./Virtual Ethics
Date: 8 Apr 92 18:59:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9204081901.AA07426

allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>	That's an interesting point. Should people have copyrights over 
>their appearance, etc? I'd say yes. Just as someone shouldn't be able to 
>find out/use my grades, etc. without my permission, they shouldn't be able 
>to use my appearance without my permission. 

This already has been covered in court. The estates of movie stars (I
think the specific example I recall was the estate of John Wayne) have
rights to control the use of images of those persons. I don't know to
what degree this goes -- if you cannot use a characteristic spoken phrase,
say, in a commercial, or use a cartoon of the person, as opposed to a photo
or film clip.

Bette Midler just recently won a court case over the use of a
"sound-alike" singer imitating her voice in a commercial. So not only
the appearance but the recognizeable voice of a well-known person is 
protected. (I'm not sure about "protected by what" -- it's not
copyright, not trademark -- it's something else.)

I brought a similar subject up some years ago on the video list/group
but it never was discussed in any depth, but the technology that permits
it is rapidly approaching. It is probably here already but expensive,
but in a few years it will be available to the individual: Suppose you
wanted a porno movie starring Raquel Welch and Kim Basinger. You could
take the video image of an existing porn movie and replace the faces
of a couple of the stars with the faces of Raquel and Kim. You could
probably edit the bodies' images to also appear to be those of those
famous people, and tweak them to look just like you want. Then, under
computer control, those stars' images will engage in all the acts the
now-replaced porn performers did. With a little more advanced
technology, you won't even need the porn movie to use as a base -- you'd
have a database of the movements of a human body and could plug in any
famous persons' video images and then make those video images do
whatever you want to see them do.

You could create your own "ABSCAM" tapes of any political figure you
wished taking bribes and saying any outrageous thing you want to depict
him or her doing. 

When this arrives, I would think the immediate reaction, as usual, will
be "laws against it". But a more forthright and useful reaction would be
to change the way one views a video image. It would become no more
trustworthy than a drawing is today. If someone says they have "proof"
that x did y, and then produces a drawing of x doing y, this is no proof
and they will be laughed down. A video will become no more reliable or
trustworthy than a drawing, because anyone will be able to make a video
image of anything and it will not have any necessary relationship to any
event that may have happened.

In this environment, what will happen to the "rights" of a person to
their image? Right now, I can draw an image of anybody doing anything
I wish to show them doing (if I could draw :-). This is nothing new --
cartoonists have done this for centuries, and it is protected under free
speech and political commentary in many jurisdictions. Soon, I'll be able
to produce a video the same way. Should that be restricted just because
it is more realistic?

Regards, Will
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