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Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/deepfakes... - June 27th, 2025

As you mention, if copyright law codifies the rights, it then becomes trivial to stick the property rights to self into a trust or other post death entity for the estate to administer and enforce. The nation state policy is the hard part.

This is already the law in Hungary.

I've seen a few mentions of that law online. It completely overturns existing copyright law and has the potential for all sorts of problems.

ie If you take a photo and some random person is in the background what happens to the copyright of the picture?

Creating a copyright on one's likeness seems pretty messy in regards to that, but there is a somewhat similar idea in German law (and surely other places) that creates similar concerns for using an image or work.

We have a "right to one's image", you generally can't distribute/publish photos with recognizable people without consent. Unless they're truly just "part of the landscape" (background randos), crowds at public events, or of legitimate news/artistic interest.

I'd expect a similar threshold to apply to this Danish solution.

Depends if you are a private citizen or a professional photographer, where you made the photo and how noticible they are in the frame.

In general in Europe laws only set a general intent or outline, and judges take circumstances into account

I dont think this is actually true? You can, namely, write a will. You can choose what is done with your possesions, presumably including destroying them. Iirc there's a rule called the law against perpetuities, where you have control over your estate via the will, maximally until some time after the death of a specific named person who was alive at the time of your death. (which I find a strange stipulation)

> where you have control over your estate via the will, maximally until some time after the death of a specific named person who was alive at the time of your death. (which I find a strange stipulation)

This is a compromise of allowing some of your wishes to be fulfilled after your death while preventing long term 'dead hand' control over property and resources. You can set up a foundation dedicated to "thing" but can't control what that foundation does until the end of time.

We probably don't want to live in a world that is controlled by the wishes of someone gone for 500 years who had a view of the world completely at odds with the present. It centralizes power and ties the hands of those living in the present.

I agree its good for it not to be infinite. I just find it strange that the length is based on gambling at the time of your will which person you can name will live longest. Why not a fixed amount of time?

I guess it's so you can provide stipulations to etc care for your newlyborn for their life or something, idk

The argument of likeness seems odd to me because there are at least a dozen people who might look almost exactly like you who are alive somewhere in the world.

What if I give explicit permission to use my likeness but my lookalike demands it can't be used? We're both dead. Do my wishes not get respected because someone who looks like they could be my identical twin had other wishes? Whoever's estate has the deeper pockets?

See photography by François Brunelle. The similarities went past appearances too. Many of the stranger dopplegangers had similar hobbies and even similar personalities. So if an AI recreation looks like me, acts like me, and has the same hobbies as me that means nothing unless someone is trying to claim it is me (rather my likeness).

To lawyers, “likeness”is a term of art and means much more than just how you look, including image, name, voice, and other identifiable features. Basically it’s what actors bring to contracts in addition to their labor.

I don’t claim to understand all the intricacies but it is the relevant term of art when discussing this topic from a legal perspective.

Yes, but none of that is truly unique. The odds of a doppleganger sharing my name are astronomically slim but my looks, voice, interests, personality, etc. are not truly unique to me.

For an example, what of voice impersonators? Sounding like Morgan Freeman is not unique to Morgan Freeman. What if a soundalike legally changes their name to Morgan Freeman? What if a lookalike changes their name?

I'm familiar with the existence of such laws but less so with how they are enforced or how they can even be enforced at all. The laws have never made that much sense to me.

The way it mostly works is that if a company hires a Morgan Freeman impersonator to do the voice over for their car commercial, Morgan Freeman can sue them for using his likeness without permission:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849...

> We need not and do not go so far as to hold that every imitation of a voice to advertise merchandise is actionable. We hold only that when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs and have committed a tort in California.

So essentially only the rich and famous have any meaningful protection under the law. Have to love the legal system sometimes.

Also sucks if you sound like Morgan Freeman. Put out of an entire line of work because someone was famous for sounding like you first.

If you not impersonating Morgan Freeman, and there is no history or framing to make that connection, he is unlikely to sue you, or win a lawsuit.

Courts are quite aware that similar things can come from divergent sources.

Even copyright law fails to protect commonality between works that would be illegal if actually copied, but were arrived at legitimately and credibly independently.

Not saying someone shouldn't use common sense to avoid problems. Don't do Morgan Freeman impersonations comedically, then voice overs of movies.

The goal I think is to protect people with valuable likenesses being undercut by cheap knockoffs, not to protect everyone's likeness. So it's more like a trademark than anything.

> of an estate which is administered and distributed according to your will and/or state law. Other than your state’s law and your will, it’s not up to you what happens to your stuff after you die.

That's right there at the beginning of the article!

> argues US law should give a dead person's estate a limited right to digital deletion as a defense against the exploitation of digital remains.

I was going to attempt to expess the same sentiment, or go on a tangent about how insane it would be to have a digital copy of me causing a bit of trouble and chaos into eternity,but what has realy struck me is that I am going through my parents house, as they are both in long term care, together, and looking through a mountain of stuff, and finding little that retains any relevance....they are not here in this jumble, cubic yards of paper and photos, and 40 years of computers and hard drives,etc and I feel quite strongly that whatever can be resurected from any amount of data, will still be irrelevant, horrible and creepy ,it is not going to be a "thing"

> It would probably be worth having a law that says that your likeness is part of your estate, and then it can be covered by estate law.

Varies state to state, but you might google "postmortem right of likeness" to determine whether it would truly be worth it to have such a law.

> distributed according to your will

So the dead do have rights, and a process for defining them.

Sort of!

Deceased people’s wills are ignored every day.

Non-deceased people's wills are ignored every day.

Doesn't have an influence on their rights.

We know what the law is. We're talking about what the law should be.

How about this then: this violates ancient and near-universal proscriptions against necromancy. The living are not to speak with the mouths of the dead.

What about your identical twin, who has a very different take on what can be done with their likeness?

Right, so the estate, and not a third party.

Or maybe a Family trust.

I would like to pass on my GDPR rights over my data in my will. It already can be a struggle for others to use rights of others they legally hold, eg by legal documents like a death certificate. The law (EU+UK at least) is adaptable and extendable, but the data holders aren't.