OK, so apparently one can not copyright one's face.[0] Because it's a "naturally created thing". Maybe one could design a new face, copyright it, and then have it created in situ. But that seems unlikely.
On the other hand, that also means that no other faces can be copyrighted. So with suitably advanced surgical methods, one could change faces periodically. Maybe even on a whim. Perhaps one could apply technology being developed for androids.
Would copyrighting a picture of your face be sufficient? Other than a picture of your face, how does the form of your face exist, so as to be pointed to in a legal setting where copyright is enforced? It would have to be a picture, graphic representation. Are these 'naturally created things'?
Well, I do see that celebrities have filed lawsuits against videogame makers over profiting from their faces.[0] But the key there, I think, is "profiting". They can't prevent use in news coverage, even.
So anyway, I doubt that one could copyright one's picture. But IANAL.
My understanding is as follows: You absolutely can receive a copyright for a picture of a face, just as much as you can receive a copyright for a picture of a mountain. The face does not receive a copyright, and neither does a mountain.
Your likeness is clearly something in the public. I can't sue people for looking at me without paying, for instance. Your likeness could very well be a trademark, though. Especially celebrities do business expressly based on their likeness. It is their brand and they can probably protect it. So you can't use that likeness/brand without their permission (as long as they protect that mark).
> ...a social issue should be solved with social/legal means, not technical ones.
So, say my AR software needs to scan an environment in order to function, but the law says that I cannot scan a particular "excluded" surface (e.g. a face), how do I determine which surfaces I must exclude if I cannot scan them first inorder to discern between a public surface or a protected surface? The law needs to regulate developed technology, but by the same token, technology must be developed to enable compliance with and also enforcement of the law.
It seems to me that the solution is a joint legal/technical one. The third factor is the willingness of humans to comply with the law. The fourth factor is the ability of citizens & government to enforce the law. To see where all of this could lead, we just need to look at what happened with the utter failureof the "do not call registry" (1).
> The only solutions to this problem are legal solutions. It is a legal problem to begin with.
This is a flawed statement. Yes, "ownership" is a man-made construct (1). However, laws are only as good as our technical capacity to comply and enforce them. Take carbon emissions for example, MARPOL has put in place several tiers of ship exhaust GHG emissions controls (man-made limits) which are being implemented over several years because the technology needed to comply (and enforce) @ the ever-shrinking thresholds is still under development. However, industry is making progress and we are complying to avoid fines or operational restrictions.
A few things might cover it. If you are seen as implying that the famous actors are in the film in order to sell more then that is fraud (obtaining money by false pretences). If it can be argued that the output makes the real people look bad (via bad performance or association with subject matter they are not happy with) then perhaps there is a defamation case to be had.
Of course, right or wrong, there is always just the money argument: go up against someone famous (or a company acting on their behalf) in court and see who runs out of cash reserves first...
Not sure of the implications of that for non-government applications of facial recognition technology, though. Sounds like an interesting potential test case.
In the future, people can put on copyrighted temporary tattoo arts on their faces so that when their face gets captured by one of these face recognition video cams they have no choice but to smudge your face down. This might be a good start-up.. but after further searching: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/makeu... lol.
But you can copyright the markings you add to yourself (makeup, tattoo, etc.) Consider the paint and makeup markings used by cyberpunk to "hide" from cameras.
Copyright is just about the rights to copy, reproduce, or publish something. You need the technology to physically copy faces in the first place before even talking about things like copyrightable faces.
What about genetic modifications to a naturally created thing? I wonder how closely tied to the copyright system the patent system is, seeing as they folded under pressure against the old rule of no patenting organic material, I wonder how far off copyright is from doing similar.
Funny that in a few already oppressive big brother type countries, lots of people already walk around with surgical masks. For different reasons, but...
The source cited in Wikipedia lists only 11 states that have anti-mask laws. Sometimes there are religious or medical exceptions. Many of them are targeting the KKK or bank robbers, but most of the litigation against them has been state civil liberties unions teaming up with the KKK, who is not very sympathetic. But I don't see how this can possibly be constitutional: http://io9.gizmodo.com/man-in-joker-makeup-charged-with-felo...
This is the kind of headline (and analysis) that drives me a little crazy. It brings, in my opinion, completely corrupted versions of the two key words: "Owns" and "Face."
Despite the article's scary posturing about the matters of intellectual property that arise from all humans having a face, it fails to remember this basic concrete fact:
My face is a physical object - bone structure, musculature, skin, and the like - that is attached to me. And I unambiguously own it. Anybody who literally tries to steal it will be met with the wrath of actual facial self-defense.
On the other hand, once photons have bounced off this physical structure and made their way into a CMOS sensor it turns out that I don't own the content of the storage media contained by the devices doing the capturing.
Then, when someone take this same media and publishes it online, its ownership, in an organic sense, becomes wholly unclear. The only reason anybody can "own" a piece of media on the internet is because the state, via (often capricious) enforcement of intellectual property laws, says so.
In a more concrete sense, it seems quite clear that anybody can own and use any piece of media on the internet for any purpose; they just need to be informed that, for the moment, the state may exact violence upon - you guessed it - their face and other body parts - for doing so.
In fact, a much better case to use for analysis of the literal question of "Who Owns Your Face?" are laws banning gas masks, such as the emergency order at the WTO protests in Seattle in 2000. The implication of such an order, obviously, is that the state owns your face, and may use your mucus membranes as an attack surface for irritant chemicals to control you, and that you don't own your face in sufficient measure to take preventative action.
What I'm saying is: a crucial piece of thinking critically about civic virtue and property in the information age is to distinguish a thing from a representation of that thing. The former can clearly be owned and its owner is usually obvious. The latter probably cannot, and states who fail to recognize this will increasingly fall behind.
I don't think that people having this conversation fail to make the distinction that you're making. They talk like that because language is metaphorical. In fact, if you pay attention, you'll notice that you do the same sort of thing all the time.
Speaking about it differently will frame the concepts differently, but the way that people frame a concept is an intentional choice (it's not an error because there's no right way to do it). You can disagree about the way to frame the debate (that is, the way to think about the concepts), but understanding the physics of light sensors doesn't automatically lead to framing this particular conversation differently. There are lots of valid ways of thinking about the issue that doesn't rely on understanding physics.
Could anyone help me with this question. If I take a picture of "famous person" in public I can put it on a cover of a book and sell it correct? (USA)
Now if I take that same picture and slap it on a boxcover for "shampoo" that I sell, I assume "famous person" could legally get me to remove the image. What "law" would they be using to get me to remove it?
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 91.8 ms ] threadOn the other hand, that also means that no other faces can be copyrighted. So with suitably advanced surgical methods, one could change faces periodically. Maybe even on a whim. Perhaps one could apply technology being developed for androids.
0) https://www.quora.com/Can-you-copyright-your-own-face
Edit: Gelatin prosthetics can be quite realistic: http://www.imgrum.org/media/1204871196470265504_2263538440
So anyway, I doubt that one could copyright one's picture. But IANAL.
0) http://www.mtv.com/news/1872058/video-game-celebrity-lawsuit...
Your likeness is clearly something in the public. I can't sue people for looking at me without paying, for instance. Your likeness could very well be a trademark, though. Especially celebrities do business expressly based on their likeness. It is their brand and they can probably protect it. So you can't use that likeness/brand without their permission (as long as they protect that mark).
IANAL, of course, and I could easily be wrong.
Then it's a work of art right? And those can be copyrighted.
But then I suppose your new novel copyrighted artwork is subject to fair use for eg. drivers licenses etc.
AFAIK Facebook had to turn the facial recognition off in the EU, specifically for this reason.
Yes, occasionally it may degenerate (as the patent trolls show), but a social issue should be solved with social/legal means, not technical ones.
And yet, I doubt that the German laws that you cite would prevent the BND from collecting data, sharing with NSA etc, and so on.
So, say my AR software needs to scan an environment in order to function, but the law says that I cannot scan a particular "excluded" surface (e.g. a face), how do I determine which surfaces I must exclude if I cannot scan them first inorder to discern between a public surface or a protected surface? The law needs to regulate developed technology, but by the same token, technology must be developed to enable compliance with and also enforcement of the law.
It seems to me that the solution is a joint legal/technical one. The third factor is the willingness of humans to comply with the law. The fourth factor is the ability of citizens & government to enforce the law. To see where all of this could lead, we just need to look at what happened with the utter failureof the "do not call registry" (1).
1.) http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2016/05/rob...
The only solutions to this problem are legal solutions. It is a legal problem to begin with.
> The only solutions to this problem are legal solutions. It is a legal problem to begin with.
This is a flawed statement. Yes, "ownership" is a man-made construct (1). However, laws are only as good as our technical capacity to comply and enforce them. Take carbon emissions for example, MARPOL has put in place several tiers of ship exhaust GHG emissions controls (man-made limits) which are being implemented over several years because the technology needed to comply (and enforce) @ the ever-shrinking thresholds is still under development. However, industry is making progress and we are complying to avoid fines or operational restrictions.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_property
I was initially riffing on MPPA dogma. But I wasn't thinking through the implications of fair use.
You could have a special tattoo design or a piercing. Or even just a hair style.
Of course, right or wrong, there is always just the money argument: go up against someone famous (or a company acting on their behalf) in court and see who runs out of cash reserves first...
Not sure of the implications of that for non-government applications of facial recognition technology, though. Sounds like an interesting potential test case.
What about genetic modifications to a naturally created thing? I wonder how closely tied to the copyright system the patent system is, seeing as they folded under pressure against the old rule of no patenting organic material, I wonder how far off copyright is from doing similar.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_laws#United_States
I, for one, welcome the oncoming privacy-enhancing cyberpunk fashion.
Just on a lark, I looked up whois records for hideyourface.com etc and found it is registered to Amazon.com [1].
[1] http://whois.domaintools.com/hideyourface.com
Maybe its just me, but nowadays I am not feeling any better about that either. :-)
Maybe we'll all need a face changer like that used in Almost Human, season 1, episode 3.
Despite the article's scary posturing about the matters of intellectual property that arise from all humans having a face, it fails to remember this basic concrete fact:
My face is a physical object - bone structure, musculature, skin, and the like - that is attached to me. And I unambiguously own it. Anybody who literally tries to steal it will be met with the wrath of actual facial self-defense.
On the other hand, once photons have bounced off this physical structure and made their way into a CMOS sensor it turns out that I don't own the content of the storage media contained by the devices doing the capturing.
Then, when someone take this same media and publishes it online, its ownership, in an organic sense, becomes wholly unclear. The only reason anybody can "own" a piece of media on the internet is because the state, via (often capricious) enforcement of intellectual property laws, says so.
In a more concrete sense, it seems quite clear that anybody can own and use any piece of media on the internet for any purpose; they just need to be informed that, for the moment, the state may exact violence upon - you guessed it - their face and other body parts - for doing so.
In fact, a much better case to use for analysis of the literal question of "Who Owns Your Face?" are laws banning gas masks, such as the emergency order at the WTO protests in Seattle in 2000. The implication of such an order, obviously, is that the state owns your face, and may use your mucus membranes as an attack surface for irritant chemicals to control you, and that you don't own your face in sufficient measure to take preventative action.
What I'm saying is: a crucial piece of thinking critically about civic virtue and property in the information age is to distinguish a thing from a representation of that thing. The former can clearly be owned and its owner is usually obvious. The latter probably cannot, and states who fail to recognize this will increasingly fall behind.
Speaking about it differently will frame the concepts differently, but the way that people frame a concept is an intentional choice (it's not an error because there's no right way to do it). You can disagree about the way to frame the debate (that is, the way to think about the concepts), but understanding the physics of light sensors doesn't automatically lead to framing this particular conversation differently. There are lots of valid ways of thinking about the issue that doesn't rely on understanding physics.
Now if I take that same picture and slap it on a boxcover for "shampoo" that I sell, I assume "famous person" could legally get me to remove the image. What "law" would they be using to get me to remove it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_Stat...