Hacker News Reader

Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

It's there any copyright protections for a person's voice? If not, David Attenborough and Morgan Freeman will be lead voice actors in my next game project

View on HN

The only possible voice I can think of that I would be certain it could have this kind of protection right now is actually Majel Barret-Roddenberry. She apparently did a lot of voice recording specifically to let this kind of thing happen. What I couldn't fathom is what would happen if something like this was used to mimic someone else's voice that hadn't agreed to such a thing.

http://www.avclub.com/article/late-majel-barrett-might-still...

The NPR Planet Money podcast did one of their best episodes about this, called Frank Sinatra's Mug:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/09/459116467/episo...

There's a transcript here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...

When you mentioned Frank Sinatra it made me wonder what would this AI make of uploading singing instead of speaking?

There was an advert on TV in the UK and Ireland for an insurance company called MoreThan. They had a Morgan Freeman impersonator who ended the ad by saying "I'm Morethan Freeman". I seem to recall a legal kerfuffle but I can't find anything online about it.

One of the ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpPzcAseU8E

If nothing else the source material you use would likely be recordings that others made, so you will not own the copyright on the source material and with how copyright works the synthesized recordings might be considered derivative works of the source material. IANAL, TINLA.

So if you are famous enough to have your voice seen as distinct, you are already screwed... interesting.

I don't think you can claim that your game was voiced by either of them, but I don't see how using this would be any more infringing than using a tuned synthesizer.

Their lawyers > your lawyers though

He probably won't be able to claim the game is "voiced by", but maybe he can get away with saying it features "voices of"?

Actually i wasn't planning on saying either, just having the calm voice of Morgan Freeman tell me i need shoot the zombies or whatever the game will be, and then David explaining with fascination how such a poor shot could have survived this far whenever you miss

It's not copyright, but a 'right of publicity.' It's an interesting area of law, although I don't feel like doing a write-up right now. Basically you can't use a celebrity's likeness to imply endorsement; otherwise you'd see a lot more advertising with cartoon versions of famous people. This technology won't affect courts very much as it's just another kind of likeness.

AFAIK not copyright per se in the traditional sense, but there is a "likeness right".

This. I would assume copying a voice pattern is treated no different from copying an appearance. If a 3D model is a very close approximation to a particular person's face and you use it in a game intentionally to benefit from that person's likeness, you can run into legal issues. And of course you really open yourself up for a lawsuit if you then attach the real person's name to it.

EDIT: See the NPR Planet Money podcast linked elsewhere in the comments. Apparently there are fairly specific laws to protect someone's likeness -- including their voice -- thanks to the entertainment industry and Frank Sinatra.

Look at Crispin Glover's lawsuit for Back to the Future II as well.

Tom Waits sued for this reason multiple times [1].

I guess he had a strong case because in all three cases he was (or so he claimed) approached to do a commercial and the advertisers went with a Waits-like surrogate after he declined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits#Lawsuits

I wouldn't try it without heavy modification of the voice. Since for example a Morgan Freeman earns money with his voice, you've effectively robbed him of income (even though there's virtually no chance that he'd have participated).

Tribute bands seem to get away with it.

I was thinking of creating a large corpus of my voice, as well as a few of my friend's voices, and licensing it under creative commons or the public domain. Perhaps we can get an early start on making this technology familiar and acceptable before lawyers start to shut us down.

It's personality rights. You cannot copyright a naturally existing thing like a face or a voice.

In the UK there's a common law thing called "passing off" that's used to protect unregistered IP from impersonation. It's already used to protect unauthorised abuse of voice actors IP.

I'm pretty sure "passing off" requires the seller to be fraudulently claiming the goods are the goods of someone else, that if you up-front say "the voices used are generated by computer algorithm and do not represent any real person" that a claim of passing off would be rendered moot.

Trademark/Copyright can't be disclaimed in this way but Passing Off requires active deception AIUI?

Well no.

You're right that being clear to avoid confusion is a good preventative measure, but you're wrong that intent to defraud is required. It's enough that the public is (or is likely to be) confused.

See Reckitt v Borden (1990) judgement referring to the three-part test for claims of passing off (my emphasis):

"Second, he must demonstrate a misrepresentation by the defendant to the public (whether or not intentional) leading or likely to lead the public to believe that goods or services offered by him are the goods or services of the plaintiff"

How is this not vulnerable to the "Mickey Mouse animated feature film but drawn by 6th graders"?

I'm not quite following your question?

It might be worth noting Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark and so doesn't need to use the weaker Passing Off law?

Copyright was designed to protect artistic expression. A song can be protected. A performance can be protected. A playing style cannot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com