No. This isn't a new area of law. Legal "Deepfakes" have been around a long while. There is even a supreme court case covering the matter: Falwell, 1988. That involved a fake interview with Billy Graham, using his image and putting words in his mouth. If the 1988 supreme court wouldn't protect the reputation of a national religious leader, they aren't going to do so for politicians today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell
This is from the movie, but it is accurate to what was said. This interaction really did change supreme court procedure, introducing a far less formal back-and-forth oral argument. Jokes were almost unheard of before this case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeTuNES82O0
The trial court argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvB61mDoG8
> In an 8–0 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Hustler magazine, holding that a parody ad published in the magazine depicting televangelist and political commentator Jerry Falwell Sr. as an incestuous drunk, was protected speech since Falwell was a public figure and the parody could not have been reasonably considered believable.
The post you're replying to explicitly talks about convincing deepfakes. Also, Falwell was a televangelist and political commentator, not a senator. So I don't think this court case is a good example.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell
Well that gave me a good chuckle! The fact that a supreme judge is appointed by the sitting president and confirmed by the Senate means that they can push whatever dogma the ruling party has.
Ugh, that is the type of free-speech infringement that people should be worried about, not all this stuff about how YouTube taking down videos is government censorship.
A really good deepfake is still fiction. Really good writing is fiction. Really poorly-written fake "news" blogs "reporting" lies as truth is fiction. These are all allowed to exist (in the USA) because of the 1st Amendment. It is the price that we pay for living in a free society, that the government cannot tell you "your fiction is not allowed."
Textual accounts of real events, and lies about real events, have existed for ages. Sometimes the lies are more convincing than the truth. Audio recording and doctored audio has existed for ages. Photography and doctored photos have existed for ages. Video recording and doctored video has existed for ages. We'll survive another flavor of doctoring just fine without the government's help.
A writer who makes a book that is word-for-word the same as another book is infringement.
Making a pixel-perfect copy of a photo, from scratch, is an infringement.
Copying a song, perfectly, is infringement.
Whether something is a 'lie or the truth' - or 'which one is more convincing' doesn't really matter.
With 'deepfakes' we're going to have to get serious because people will literally be putting words in other people's mouths, creating fake representations of other people, it's going to cause problems. This issue may not actually fall under copyright.
I'm specifically addressing the notion that the government would carve out a free-speech exception for "deepfakes", like "deep fakes of Politicians / Celebrities are illegal." Which would be clearly unconstitutional, because you are forbidding creation of a creative, expressive work.
Whether the works that you are free to create, regardless of format (photoshopped image, deepfaked video), violate some other law - libel/slander - is separate as well. Yes, they certainly could, just like a photoshopped image today could be libelous.
Not if it’s libel. And a convincing deepfake that harms someone’s reputation could easily be interpreted as an act of defamation by the creator, which would mean it’s not protected speech.
There's no reason to think libel laws wouldn't apply to deep fakes the same way the apply to a photoshopped image, or a textual lie.
We (ok, mostly those in power or who want to be) constantly feed each other the most manipulative, self interested lies for personal/organizational benefit, 24/7/365.
Life has always revolved around either being manipulated, or knowing that that's the point of what you hear, and putting in the effort to find out more before forming an opinion.
Hence investigative journalists, etc etc.
> God help us all...
Umm, we've all been deceived about almost everything since forever. There's no sudden worsening here, just a newer level of verification required.
One set of shared delusions is not the same as an anarchy of delusions.
Wars are started based on disinformation, black propaganda and/or false flags anyway.[0] Nobody (at least who wasn't already spoiling for a fight) is going to start a war just because of a deepfake posted to Youtube.
> What will the third world victims of some hate story stirred up by AI doctored footage care about first amendment protections in America ?
This video was taken down, rightly or wrongly, due to American law. It's quite likely deepfakes are actually 'more legal' in some countries outside the US, due to differences in legislation.
For example, depending on political/sexual content, an Iranian or North Korean video host may be less interested in taking down a deepfake of Jay-Z than Youtube.
> Deepfakes are a clear and present existential danger to ourselves and others
The real danger with deepfakes (and other technology that the rich and powerful don't like, such as encryption) is overreaction and people tripping over themselves to call for even more limits on their own free expression.
> God help us all once we can't even believe what we see anymore.
And God help us all when we have no way to speak out any more. As shown in the link below, we never could believe what we see.
[0] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-growing-list-of-admit...
You mean like scenes shot with actors to imply certain events happening? ex. scenes protests in some city when it's actually just a bunch of actors making it look like a protest is happening?
The harder lesson is learning to catch yourself and see past it before getting manipulated.
The hardest lesson is not knee jerking and giving those who want to control you the tools to limit everyone's speech to just approved material. (China, Iran, Vietnam, North Korea, these ring a bell? VERY slippery slope.)
And once elected, they'll be stuck doing it, or the news networks will decide that it did happen, and no one will be able to figure out that it actually was not. At that point, is there any difference?
You don't need new law. It's already against the law to copy someone's appearance in an attempt to impersonate them other than fair use.
> anyone watching these videos can see that it is NOT Jay Z in the video.
I'm not that familiar with JayZ and it's more than enough that I would have been convinced and not given it a second thought. It's not obviously parody and the only tip off it was even fake was "(speech synthesis)" in the title.
Some form of personality rights make sense to me, as otherwise Mickey Mouse would enjoy more legal protection than you and I. And obviously it's not an absolute right - you can't sue red light cameras for photographing you.
There's also the question of whether a neural net trained on a copyrighted image or video is a derivative work - in contrast to a 3D model made by an artist who merely references copyrighted images or videos.
Not a lawyer, but...
It doesn't seem like parody to me. It also doesn't seem like it has much of anything to do with copyright at all - one of the videos taken down was reportedly a performance of an excerpt from Hamlet, which is definitely in the public domain.
On the other hand it does seem like a possible violation of trademark law, but I have no idea how that would play out in court. Which is confusing, because I thought the DMCA only applied to copyright (it's the Digital Millennium _Copyright_ Act, after all) but perhaps I'm wrong and it includes provisions about trademark as well?
As far as I know, a legally enforceable "DMCA takedown" can only be about copyright infringement. However, YouTube is under no obligation to not honor takedowns that aren't legally binding.
I couldn't find the reference offhand but I've read that YouTube has no ability to adjudicate the validity of a DMCA takedown request at all. They must responed as proscribed by the DMCA.
Which makes sense because once the DMCA is involved it's ultimately a legal dispute between the person that uploaded the video and the person that claims to own the copyright. And that kind of dispute is something only the courts can decide.
If Jay-Z was not satisfied with the process, he could submit a DMCA request and YouTube would have to follow the DMCA requirements in processing it, but the current process is better for both of them (not for the posters of the contested content, though).
That's what's ripe for abuse. Why isn't it a fiduciary responsibility to their "partners" to make sure they aren't needlessly deprived of revenue, in situations where a 1st year law student could tell them there isn't a legal basis for the takedown?
The legal basis for the takedown is the language in the Youtube terms and conditions that says that Youtube can take down the content at their discretion. It does not matter if that decision is caused by a non-binding takedown request of a self-asserted copyright owner, or by a drunken manager randomly clicking to remove videos, the legal arrangement between Youtube and their "partners" does not assume any fiduciary responsibility to ensure that your videos will be kept unless absoltely needed, and no current law is forcing them to assume that responsibility.
I mean, the statement "why isn't it a fiduciary responsibility to their "partners" to make sure they aren't needlessly deprived of revenue," seems very weird from the perspective of law - why would there be such a responsibility? Do you have some law in mind that would cause it? E.g. CEOs have fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, stockbrokers have fiduciary responsibility to their clients due to specific laws, but in general there is no fiduciary responsibility between parties in a contract, the parties can be 'hostile' towards each other as much as they want.
The default legal position is that every private actor is free to act as they want for their own benefit as long as they are not breaking any laws or contracts. If I cause you some losses by doing things I am entitled to do, there's no possible liability - in order to claim damages, I have to have done something wrong. So in the absence of a specific law or contract requiring Amazon to ensure that their "partners" aren't needlessly deprived of revenue, that lost revenue is not Amazon's problem, and they're entitled to (for example) intentionally cause partners to lose that revenue if it benefits Amazon in some way and there's no statute or contract that restricts Amazon from doing so.
If YouTube stops taking down these videos based on this "fiduciary duty" and they get sued again, will this union pay for the legal fees and potential damages? Yeah, not likely.
But no, Jay-Z should not be able to take down parodies on YouTube that make it clear to the viewer that they are using deepfakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyemXtkB-xk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7u-y9oqUSw
was this an automatic takedown and maybe they have meanwhile been made available again?
You mean enforce? Youtube can remove whatever they want; they don't need to be in the right about it.
This is a key problem with DMCA, it shifts all the risk/cost of deciding cases onto platforms, their only logical response is to take things down, so everything gets taken down.
But YouTube doesn't follow the DMCA process at all, they have their own procedure, with no such recourse.
So that's a huge incentive to just take everything down.
Effectively the whole point of DCMA (this part at least) is to pierce the common carrier protection platforms have.
Am I wrong? If so, any idea what Youtube don't just let people counterclaim and leave everyone else to argue it out in court?
> any idea what Youtube don't just let people counterclaim and leave everyone else to argue it out in court?
Essentially YouTube in the pre-Google days was purposefully uploading infringing videos, and Viacom (and others) used that to sue them and under the settlement agreement forced YouTube to build the Content-ID system and have a more lax takedown system.
Really? I thought if it was "so good" that people don't realize it's a parody, it loses the relevant protections against defamation and infringement on likeness rights/image/trademark/whatever.
If it was a [manual] Content ID claim, there's no legal reason YT has to remove the video; the content ID system exists to provide an (arguably abusable) way for YT to scan every piece of uploaded content for copyrighted material.
If it was a DMCA, YouTube has to remove the video to maintain impunity.
But, as stated in a related comment, this is new territory in the eyes of the law. Maybe this video is a parody, but if it's not clear about that it would be clearly illegal. Even an extremely good impersonator can be sued if they try to actually pass themselves off as someone else.
automatic Turing test pass
YouTube took these videos down based on a copyright (DMCA?) claim. Which of course isn't a court ruling or anything.
At the same time, no court would ever uphold this removal, because it obviously falls under "parody" which is protected. (Otherwise shows like Saturday Night Live couldn't even exist.)
After all, the end result is no different from a really good vocal impersonator. In fact, a really good impersonator will definitely do better.
It's disappointing that Jay-Z (or more likely some lawyer working for him) is abusing YouTube's takedown mechanism this way.
But at the same time, I can see how this could seem particularly scary for a performer. After all, if you've spent decades creating a recognizable profitable persona... the idea that anybody with a personal computer can flood YouTube with fake lyrics that aren't yours could feel terrifyingly like losing control of everything you've built.
What if some really nasty stuff went viral and became as associated with Jay-Z as the rest of his stuff? Stuff that did serious damage to his brand, which "nobody could unhear"?
I genuinely wonder if deepfake technology will actually result in new copyright restriction law. I.e. to make it a crime to produce unlicensed deepfakes that are genuinely indistinguishable to the average person, regardless of whether they're parody or not. (While "bad" parodies like SNL will continue to be protected as always.)
I kind of feel like that's going to have to be the outcome at some point in the near future -- in fact, as soon as really convincing yet nasty deepfakes of senators and representatives start making the rounds and spreading on Facebook, I suspect a new law will get passed incredibly quickly.