The NO FAKES ACT released as a discussion draft last week proposes establishing a new federal digital replica right that would extend 70 yea
So, there's a bill being drafted to try and outlaw the use of likenesses via AI without the portrayed individuals' consent by giving a permanent "performance right" to said individuals, which at first blush would sound great but...
As this article points out (much better than I probably will, so read it), there's some big problems there. Firstly, it makes no allowances for fair use. So a small creator using it to shitpost and a megacorp stealing from their creators.
Secondly, by applying it as a copyright to the dead as well as the living, it gives megacorps every incentive to use only dead performers they own the likenesses to instead of live performers who can say no.
Arguably, this is a microcosm of how our culture's been rendered a wasteland of IP-driven rehashes rather than anything new because megacorps own so much of our still-relevant culture that would've been PD under pre-1976 copyright laws that they don't have any incentive to make anything new or take a chance on making anything new, but I digress.
And, thirdly and most alarmingly, it would allow for control of those artists' newly existing digital performance rights to be ceded to megacorps, leading to a situation where the corps can use them but they can't.
If you want to know why this is bad, look at what happened with Disco Elysium. Or; really; pretty much any prominent comic book creator ever.
Again, I am generally a Cassandra for these issues, but I figured I might as well warn y'all why this bill is bad early before hack propagandists like RJ Palmer, NFT-grifter and Internet Archive-hater Karla Oritz, and literal ex-RIAA-stooge Neil Turkewitz flood the net propagandizing it.
Because, when this article rightly says that this law is more for the benefit of megacorps protecting their "intellectual property" than artists, note where the interests of those defending it would lie as well...
