[HN Gopher] With questionable copyright claim, Jay-Z orders deep...
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With questionable copyright claim, Jay-Z orders deepfake parodies
off YouTube
Author : minimaxir
Score : 126 points
Date : 2020-04-28 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (waxy.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (waxy.org)
| acomjean wrote:
| Bette Midler sued ford back in the day (1988) for hiring an
| impersonator to sing on an ad and won. (Of course it helped that
| Ford asked her to sing first)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
|
| "The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a
| singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as
| a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice
| without express consent and approval. The appellate court
| reversed the district courts decision and ruled in favor of
| Midler, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized
| use.[4][5]"
|
| I was actually a little surprised. And this is different, but I
| think that they're imitating a famous voice (as opposed to my
| voice...) means they become a target.
|
| The fact you can fake anyone saying anything is little amazing.
| though there are people who can do it quite well:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Robert_Thompson
|
| Thompson's Arnold Schwarzenegger impression first gained national
| attention during the California gubernatorial recall election of
| 2003. Posing as Schwarzenegger, Thompson phoned in to Fox News
| Channel's morning program, Fox & Friends, fooling the hosts into
| believing (at least for a short while) that he was, in fact,
| Schwarzenegger.[4]
| throwaway_USD wrote:
| In 2015 I had an unusual solicitation from a recruiter on
| LinkedIn - as a lawyer this in my experience is a rarity unlike
| tech where I understand it to be common place - with interest
| in offering me a General Counsel position with Romero Britto's
| Company.
|
| Turns out Apple engaged in discussions to license (or maybe
| commissioning) Britto's Art, but then Apple turned around and
| essentially just "knocked off" of Britto's style. They were
| looking to bring me in to file and handle lawsuit for copyright
| infringement...I declined the offer and they filed suit (I
| believe it ended up with a settlement).
|
| It is easy to have strong opinions one way or another about
| copyright laws, but feelings of law aside, my opinion was that
| it was in very poor taste for a company like Apple to court an
| Artist like Britto and then big time him the way they
| did...sure art and artistic styles are a dime a dozen, but they
| could have used any art for their campaign, they didn't have to
| mimic/copy his style (I can't fathom what would even make them
| do that...ego I suppose). For those who are curious here is a
| link to an article that shows Apple's alleged infringing art:
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/articl...
| btilly wrote:
| Then how are Elvis impersonators not a copyright violation?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| When you see an Elvis impersonator, do you think it is Elvis?
| Probably not. Elvis is dead.
|
| If you heard an Elvis song in the background of an
| advertisement, would you assume it is actually Elvis?
| Probably, unless the ad was featuring impersonators.
| sbarre wrote:
| They might be, but they're so small-time that it's not worth
| pursuing.
|
| If an Elvis impersonator started to become famous or
| successful and popular, you can bet the EP estate would be in
| touch.
| echelon wrote:
| Or Elvis' hypothetical twin brother. Or clone. Or close
| genetic laryngeal relatives.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Or cover bands, for that matter.
| acomjean wrote:
| Cover Bands do pay a royalty. It not much if I recall (Last
| century a housemate was a former Rush Cover band member...)
|
| But I'm wondering who Dread Zeppelin pays.... (a mash up of
| Elvis and Led Zeppelin with a reggae beat, which oddly
| works better than you would expect.. for a little while)
| bsder wrote:
| I believe cover bands _can_ actually be in violation of
| copyright.
|
| It depends upon how you do it.
|
| If you cover the song, then that's one copyright.
|
| However, if you hire a bunch of people because they
| actually look and sound like the original band, that's a
| completely different copyright.
| [deleted]
| paypalcust83 wrote:
| TBH, I saw an AC/DC cover band in a backwater Wichita
| Falls, Texas bar that was way better than the original.
| They were far, far nuttier animals and absolutely mad.
| Smoosh wrote:
| Hey, AC/DC were young once. Their lead singer died from
| partying too hard ffs.
| paypalcust83 wrote:
| I saw AC/DC in concert too. These guys were naked, doing
| backflips, bouncing off the walls, and breaking shit.
| Unless you're a sick puppy, hard living doesn't translate
| to entertainment value. I don't condone or value anyone's
| recreational extremophilia and I think your one-sided
| white-knighting is off-base.
| css wrote:
| Very important to note that the Midler case has very narrow
| interpretation. From the Opinion:
|
| > 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.
| shawnz wrote:
| This doesn't seem to narrow the interpretation very much to
| me besides noting that imitating a random, unrecognizable
| stranger off the street would be a different situation.
| Cacti wrote:
| It very much narrows it to impersonating a well known voice
| _in order to to sell a product_, therefore the individual
| is _due proceeds based upon those sales_. Impersonating a
| well known person for other reasons (parody, political or
| religious expression, etc.) would not fall under this
| precedent.
|
| 'In order to sell' also may not cover all business
| transactions if they are not the primary purpose, or at
| least that is what the defense will be partly based on. In
| other words, just because a video is monetized does not
| necessarily mean it falls under this ruling.
| AlexanderNull wrote:
| Videos on YouTube are selling advertisements so wouldn't this
| apply here?
| jszymborski wrote:
| "the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs"
|
| IANAL but I think the argument can be made that YT are the
| sellers here and they are protected by the DMCA
| grecy wrote:
| > _The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous
| as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and
| therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to
| imitate their voice without express consent and approval_
|
| So it's illegal to imitate a famous person, but not a regular
| Joe?
|
| We certainly are all equal, except those who are more equal of
| course.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I would read it as: if you make a living with your unique
| voice, imitation to make profit is unlawful.
|
| The fact that they're famous is really just a tautology.
| Voices that make money are generally more famous than ones
| nobody recognizes.
| bawolff wrote:
| Those two cases sound rather different based on the intent.
|
| The ford case seemed to be ford trying to get around Midler
| saying no. Its clear they wanted to imitate her for the purpose
| of selling their cars. The current case is a mix of satire and
| people playing around with new technologies (with youtube
| advertising money being incidental).
|
| If anything seems more like a personality rights issue than a
| copyright issue.
|
| IANAL.
| mr_toad wrote:
| " Midler was not seeking damages for copyright infringement of
| the song itself, but rather for the use of her voice which she
| claimed was distinctive of her person as a singer."
|
| Whereas Roc Nation is making a claim that the videos infringe
| on Jay Z's copyrights, as well as another claim that they
| impersonate him without permission.
|
| In the Midler vs Ford case, Ford had already secured permission
| from the copyright holder for the performance.
|
| It's quite a different case.
| echelon wrote:
| Am I going to get sued for having a website that produces
| arbitrary deepfake audio (Arpabet + Tacotron + Melgan) of Trump
| and Biden?
|
| My opinion is that state actors can already do this. If we train
| the public that "photoshop for audio and video" is a thing, then
| they'll learn to be skeptical.
| kauffj wrote:
| CEO of LBRY here. These videos are welcome on LBRY.
|
| We'll have to get a real (i.e. not me commenting on HN) legal
| opinion should we get a take down request, but prima facie I
| don't see why these would be illegal.
|
| (If they are illegal and we are notified, we would put them on
| the company maintained blacklist, as we cannot remove anything
| from the network itself.)
| wayneftw wrote:
| I went and found them and listened to them out of spite.
|
| Thanks for bringing my attention to this Jay-Z!
| jedimastert wrote:
| For my own edification, wouldn't trademark law be more
| applicable?
| noizejoy wrote:
| I deleted my own post to that effect, once I saw yours - so I
| also wonder about that.
|
| However I'm not sure if YT has a separate DMCA process for
| copyright vs. trademark, or if they or people writing about
| this are just too lazy or uninformed to make the distinction.
| rhema wrote:
| Lots of examples of their synthesis here:
| https://lbry.tv/@VocalSynthesis:2?page=1 .
|
| I've been thinking about the deepfakes as a kind of computational
| thinking aid. We can all simulate reading text from the voice of
| random celebrities in our mind's eye. How different is the
| ability to bring that imagination into reality?
| anon73044 wrote:
| What with Jeff Bridges in Tron and Peter Cushing in Rogue One,
| I'd suspect in about a decade or so we'll begin seeing Disney
| movies with an almost full cast of deceased CG actors, complete
| with their own voice.
| chippy wrote:
| See The Congress: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641
|
| We should expect living actors to be signing away their
| likenesses for when they are dead.
| paypalcust83 wrote:
| I hope Lawful Masses with Leonard French covers this.
|
| I think YT may not have to do it legally, but they may still do
| it to keep money happy.
| basch wrote:
| https://www.descript.com/ and Lyrebird prevent people from making
| copies of voices that arent their own, but it looks like that cat
| is out of the bag.
|
| Abuse potential notwithstanding, and ignoring the complete
| distortion of "reality" coming soon, I'm extremely excited for
| this technology to become more mainstream. Being able to edit
| audio and video, like you edit a word document. Record a
| conversation for a couple hours, compile the transcript, and
| synthesize it into something tight, all without the need for a
| traditional video editor. Voice synthesis for words that werent
| spoken, or misspoken, frame interpolation and morphing to prevent
| the jaggy youtube cutting effect.
| randylahey wrote:
| A YouTuber (carykh) made a video where he explains an algorithm
| he made to automatically process lecture videos by speeding up,
| condensing and removing parts of the video.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8orIurGxw
| sneak wrote:
| https://s.sneak.berlin/@sneak/104054875133518950
|
| I want a YT speed setting for "constant WPM" based on their
| autocaption timestamp metadata.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| That's an amazingly obvious idea whose time has come. Who
| do we @ to get this on YouTube already?
| AlexAffe wrote:
| oh. my. god. This is about to change... a lot of things. Stop
| motion by clapping totally has me.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| > https://www.descript.com/ and Lyrebird prevent people from
| making copies of voices that arent their own
|
| how do they check which voice is your own?
| ex3ndr wrote:
| Isn't parodies are explicitly excluded from requiring to hold
| copyright to an object of a parody?
| sbarre wrote:
| In theory, sure.. But remember that on YouTube, the vast
| majority of uploaders are not customers, they're the product.
|
| Google is a business and therefore the calculations that go
| into deciding who to side with in these kinds of disputes
| doesn't _only_ factor in the law, but also the impact on the
| business.
|
| In this case, they predictably sided with a fellow corporate
| entity, like they almost always do. There is no business reason
| for them to go to bat for a small non-commercial uploader,
| they're better off just removing the video when a deep-pocketed
| company complains about it.
| hobs wrote:
| Fair use is decided on a case by case basis if the owner wants
| to take it to court, and each time you get a new bite at the
| apple!
| xoa wrote:
| Yes but with complexities in general, and a collision with non-
| copyright issues for deep fakes that starts to get into more
| unexplored societal/legal territory. First, parody is part of
| Fair Use, which means that it's an "affirmative defense": in a
| lawsuit, the burden is on the defendant to bring it up and
| prove it. That's in contrast to ordinary defenses or arguments
| around the facts asserted by the plaintiff, where it's up to
| the plaintiff to prove them to whatever the required standard
| of evidence is. In practice, that can mean a somewhat higher
| financial risk and higher chance of losing at the edges.
|
| Second though, parody (and Fair Use) is about copyright and
| trademark, protecting use of such material for commentary and
| so on. But use of someone's likeness directly, particularly for
| someone famous, in order to produce new works is arguably
| something new that hasn't really been dealt with yet. Jay-Z
| making a _copyright_ claim definitely seems dubious, and
| perhaps was done simply for convenience rather then legal
| strength, copyright disputes are the form in which most take
| down systems work. I can see arguments both ways for whether
| copyright would apply at all: in favor, the argument would be
| that the ML models are being trained via copyrighted works,
| which in turn makes them derivatives. On the other hand,
| _facts_ are not copyrightable (in the USA) regardless of effort
| or source. A counter argument would be that the ML models are
| merely deriving facts about a person 's vocal cord, facial
| structures and other physical natural characteristics, which
| then create a factual physical model which can be utilized to
| produce new works. In that case, all these new deep fakes would
| be their own brand new copyright (and potentially the ML models
| themselves not copyrightable). That'd be an interesting legal
| argument to see hashed out.
|
| But even if they're new copyrights, right to voice & likeness
| are issues in some jurisdictions and certainly could be argued
| should be more so as technology makes this easier. I think
| factors around threat to reputation and so on also are raised
| in new ways with deep fakes vs remixing and adding commentary
| to real, existing works (which can in turn be referenced by
| anyone who sees the parody). Even if there is a disclaimer on
| the original deep fake, as a de novo work which itself might
| get spread around without context it's at least different then
| what we've had until now.
| anonymfus wrote:
| Yes but an imitation is not necessary and usually a parody.
| There is a good Tom Scott's video about this distinction and
| other common misconceptions about copyright:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU (42 interesting
| minutes)
| acomjean wrote:
| Its a little tricky.. Even Weird Al gets the original artist's
| permission.
|
| "(Technically, a parodist does not need permission, but it is a
| legal gray area, and Weird Al prefers to have every artist in
| on the joke.)"
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/magazine/weird-al-yankovi...
|
| edit: the tricky pit is defining parody.
| jshevek wrote:
| > _Its a little tricky.. Even Weird Al gets the original
| artist 's permission._
|
| Weird Al's preferences don't add any strength [evidence] to
| any argument regarding the legality.
| not2b wrote:
| Weird Al is trying to save himself trouble, because going
| to court can be expensive even when you win. He can legally
| do parodies without consent, but since so many people are
| happy to give him permission, that's the easier route for
| him.
| minimaxir wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_Pitiful
|
| > While Blunt himself had no issues with Yankovic
| recording the parody, Blunt's record label Atlantic did;
| they forbade Yankovic from commercially releasing the
| song at the last minute. Yankovic eventually released the
| song online as a veritable free single; furthermore, in
| music videos and during live performances, Yankovic has
| made reference to his dispute with Atlantic. Since the
| initial debacle in 2006, Yankovic has occasionally
| reached out to Blunt and his label to see if he can
| release the song on compilations. However, each time that
| he has approached Atlantic Records, he has been denied
| permission.
| catalogia wrote:
| If Blunt had said no and his publisher said yes, Yankovic
| wouldn't have released a song even for free. So it seems
| Yankovic considers asking for permission to be both a
| matter of courtesy and liability, with more apparent
| emphasis on courtesy.
| dtech wrote:
| Most of Weird Al's songs aren't parodies in the legal
| sense.
|
| "Party in the CIA" is just "Party in the USA" with
| different Lyrics, it's not protected, just like most
| covers aren't. "Smells like Nirvana" is, because it
| directly references and parodies how the singer in the
| song is barely understandable.
| [deleted]
| aaronax wrote:
| I don't remember the specific arguments that he laid out, but
| after watching this (42 minute, worthwhile) video by Tom Scott
| about copyright my understanding changed. Now I assume that
| most things don't fit some narrow requirements regarding what
| parodies are allowed and what aren't.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
| elliekelly wrote:
| I can't help but laugh that the opening story about music
| rights could have been avoided if the original Pied Piper
| search existed.
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