A Canadian actor is suing the parent company of social media company TikTok, claiming that the video-sharing app is using her voice to narra
Bev Standing makes a living off her pipes, doing voice work for commercials, corporate videos, voice mail systems and more.
Those tracks are often made in a recording booth inside her bungalow in Welland, Ont., but she says her voice is also being heard around the world in countless videos on the social media platform TikTok.
Standing says TikTok is using recordings of her voice without permission, so she's suing its parent company, the China-based ByteDance, in a U.S. court for violating her copyright to her voice.
"This is my livelihood. This is what I do day in, day out, weekends, all day," Standing said. "And for you to just take my voice and do what you want with it, that's not right."
If Standing's claim is true but she's unable to get a settlement or loses in court, legal experts worry that voice actors will have trouble preventing their work from being taken for nothing.
"If this one slips, then you almost eradicate the industry," said Pina D'Agostino, an expert in copyright law who's an associate professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
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