How? This kind of thing is already illegal. If I’m producing a commercial for Joe’s Hot Dogs, and I hire a voice actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman, and he never says “I’m Morgan Freeman” but he’s the main voice in the commercial and the cartoon character he’s voicing looks like Morgan Freeman… well, many consumers will be confused into thinking Morgan Freeman likes Joe’s Hot Dogs, and that’s a violation of Morgan Freeman’s trademark.
no, that's definitely not illegal. Voices are not trademarkable, only jingles (melody, words + tone), and of course specific recordings of voices are copyrighted. The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.
"Trademark" is not the correct way to talk about it, but commercial use of an impersonation can be a breach of the right of publicity, even if they don't actually say they're the person.
But they are subject to right of publicity in many US jurisdictions.
Which, while more like trademark than copyright (the other thing that keeps getting raised as if it should dispose of this issue), is its own area of law, distinct from either trademark or copyright.
> The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.
That’s…not true. Though such an explicit claim would definitely be a way that they could get in trouble.
> In the United States, no federal statute or case law recognizes the right of publicity, although federal unfair competition law recognizes a related statutory right to protection against false endorsement, association, or affiliation
The important word in that quote is “federal”. In the US, right of publicity is a state law right in many states (often of particular note because of the concentration of tech and entertainment industries, it is a state law right in California.)
It's in the very article
> He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Company in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. The U.S. appellate courts ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.
There's a gray area. If Ford Motor Company hired an actor happened to sound a lot like Bette Midler using their normal speaking voice, Ford would have had a much better chance in defending their case.
As I understand it, that's essentially OpenAI's defense here.
That's a bit of a strawman: you're twisting the scope and arguing for it.
A more similar context would be: they ask Tom Hanks to create a voice similar to Woody, the cowboy from Toy Story . Tom Hanks says no, Disney says no. Then they ask you to voice their cowboy voice. It's obviously related: they tried the OG, failed, they're going for a copycat after.
But if never approached Tom Hanks or Disney, then there would be room for deniability - without mentions to real names, it would require someone to judge if it's an unauthorized copycat or just a random actor voicing a random cowboy voice.
So in your opinion, if a movie needs to have a tall, skinny red head, and then they approach someone who has those qualities and the role is turned down, then it would be illegal to get any other different tall skinny red head.
That sounds absurd to me. If you have a role, obviously the role has qualities and requirements.
And just because person 1 who happens to have those qualities turns you down, it is still valid to get a different person who fulfils your original requirements.
Yeah I think the person you’re responding to gave a bad example. I like to give examples involving commercials because they center the issue of celebrity endorsement of and association with a brand, which is the thing at issue in this OpenAI case (public corporate keynotes are essentially just multi-hour commercials).
This sort of thing happens all the time though doesn’t it? Take any animated film that get a TV show spinoff, their voice actors get replaced all the time, and I really can’t imagine that spinoff tv shows are dependent on getting all the original voice actors to grant permission. How many different actors have voiced looney toons characters over the years? Didn’t Ernie Hudson audition to play his own character for the Ghost Busters cartoon and lose out to someone else? And these are all cases where there is clear intent to sound as close to the original actor as possible.
I Am Not An Entertainment Lawyer either, so I can’t answer with too much certainty, but I’d suspect the actors have a clause in the contract they sign allowing the character to be played by someone else post-contract. Think about how many clauses were in the last employment contract you signed.
Sure, I would imagine such clauses exist to make this sort of thing a lot cleaner and easier. I also don't see how it could be reasonable to assert that in the absence of such a clause, an actor owns the rights to the voice of that character and no one else can portray that character with the same or similar voice without their express consent. Not everyone who creates something is signing Hollywood acting contracts with their hired actors, and I just can't see any court asserting that "CoolTubeProductions YouTube Channel" can't continue to produce more animations with their "Radical Rabbit" character just because they didn't have that sort of clause when they hired a voice actor at their college for the first year.
