Ok this
isseems like a problem of trademark not copyright, or impersonation and fraud by pretending to be him. It’s about his name, not really about his voice. His voice is also pretty generic EDIT: it’s only in this specific market segment that it’s problematic.Not sure if the video said it was from him or not. It’s been taken down, so I can’t check, but I don’t think it ever made that claim. Someone just noticed it sounded the same as Jeff.
It’s copyright because they had to have fed the model with voice data from Jeff’s videos.
Well in this case they used his likeness and brand to appear more legitimate and make money. So I’d argue this is trademark (even if not registered) so a legitimate complaint.
I don’t believe in “copyright” for a voice. See for example impersonators. But in this case it’s a deliberate deception which is pretty simple.
I don’t believe in intellectual property at all and think it is a form of theft, to deprive others from common knowledge or information just to seek rent. In case of patents I equate it even to aiding in genocide, since most advances in more energy efficiency use are patented and exploited for profit and slowing down adaptation. Without exhaustive attempts to try other systems to pay creators, copyright law is a moral abomination. That is a philosophical or ethical argument, not a legal one.
I think this is pretty blatant. Sadly, I don’t think there is anything we’ll be able to do about this. The onus is on you and the prosecution to prove that they did.
I thought the fallout from that would lead to companies being careful about the AI voices they use for things like product demos and tutorials…
Oh, honey…
Oh so I guess piracy is fine if it’s citizens getting robbed huh? Funny how that works.
Sony will pirate from anyone who isn’t Sony. Same with Time-Warner. Same with Columbia. Same with every studio, every label, every publishing house.
Absolutely no-one in the industry takes piracy seriously until it’s their own stuff being pirated by someone else.
Moreover, they all are used to Hollywood accounting, in which lawyers try to justify not paying someone for work whenever they can.
Hollywood. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.
A fantastic example is the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony.
It samples a few seconds of a Rolling Stones song. For this, the former Stones manager Allen Klein sues them. The Verve gives up all royalties for the whole song. So the Stones are getting that money, right? No, Klein had the ownership of the piece in question go to himself.
Klein dies in 2009, and the rights to everything finally revert to the Stones in 2019. They think the whole sampling thing with the Verve is stupid, and relinquish the song’s rights back to them.
For about 20 years, it was not only morally OK to pirate that song, but morally obligatory. The execs of the industry don’t give a shit about the artists.
Sorry but you can’t own a voice. You can sue if it is implied that a voice is you, but you can’t own the voice. If you could, you’d run into all kinds of problems. Imagine getting sued because your natural voice sounds too much like someone with more money and lawyers than you. Of if you happened to look like a celebrity/politician.
Sure, but you can use someone’s likeness to fraudulently tie them to some product you’re pushing. The burden here is if the average person familiar with the voice would mistake it for support, and if the creator likely intended for that to happen, and I think that standard has been met here given the response by the CEO and the allegations by Jeff Geerling’s audience.
If you just happen to look or sound like a celebrity/politician, that’s a different story because fraud requires intent. Now, if you used your likeness to imply support by that celebrity/politician for some cause or product, and you don’t disclose that you’re not them, then we’re back in fraud territory.
In this case, there seems to be clear evidence that there was intent to mislead viewers to improve views. That’s fraud.
Yes, that was the distinction I was trying to make. These cases are fact dependent. I’m willing to admit that in this specific case there might have been both the intent to imply endorsement by a specific person and that practical result.
But as you can see in the other comments where I’m getting reamed, owning a voice outright is a pretty popular (if currently legally dubious/impossible) concept.
Yeah, you technically don’t own your voice/likeness, but it’s quite difficult to use someone’s voice/likeness without violating some other law. If you call out that you’re using it and that your use is not endorsed by the person it came from, you should be fine.
“You can’t own your own voice”
Talking out of your dystopian ass, aren’t you?
Ok, so how would that work? What does happen if you happen to sound like someone else? Who gets the rights to that voice?
In this case, it is likely that they wanted to use his voice if the videos done in collaboration went particularly well. So the fact that it’s hus voice has a specific reason to be. This could hold as a claim, I think.
That might be a valid claim. But I would find it to be a very weak one unless they can come up with evidence that their use actually pretended to be him. The strongest argument here in my opinion would be that they hoped people would assume it’s him, even though they never state it. In the end it would be a very fact-reliant case, and subjectively I wouldn’t be convinced of an attempt to mislead based just on the use of a voice alone.
So you’d be ok with someone taking your fedia.io account and just posting whatever they wanted? I mean it’s just an account it’s not you is it?
Again, I’m asking what, in a perfect world where this kind of protection existed, would happen if two people had similar (or identical) sounding voices? Which entity would gain the legal rights and protections?
Impersonating exists, the difference there is if someone was impersonates you and says something defamatory, you can sue that person, what this article is suggesting is if I made an AI model of your voice I am not liable for anything I make that voice say
I never argued that you can’t sue for implied endorsement or defamation. That is illegal. What isn’t legal is owning a voice outright. You’re conflating the two.
Capitalism: steal first, apologize with no real repurcussions later
