Do you have a property right to your own image?

[TheMeInTeam]

LOL...okay, reset button. I'm not looking for free legal advice from an anonymous person on the internet.

Does anyone have a moral position to take and defend here?

Moral and likely legal to some degree.

If you make a false representation of someone's position/what they said you're spreading false information. There are already moral issues with doing this; it's in the neighborhood of openly lying/making false accusations (depending on what is "said"). Making Carey say "I like the color purple the most" vs "I will commit ____ act of random violence tomorrow" should be viewed differently on both moral and legal grounds. Both are bad, but the latter is much worse.

It would quickly become the case that it is increasingly impossible to discern real video footage from faked when it comes to what people say. It'd be hard to trust anything, and that would suck.

For really compromising stuff you could make slander/libel charges on something like this, but it's problematic before that too.

 

[rah]

It's going to come down to your faith in the integrity of the source. Unfortunately some put their faith in the wrong source so they will be more susceptible to propaganda.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's going to come down to your faith in the integrity of the source. Unfortunately some put their faith in the wrong source so they will be more susceptible to propaganda.

If sources are faked to the point where it's difficult to discern, you can't put faith in the integrity of any external source.

We already have this to a lesser extent with news. Having literal video footage of someone doing/saying something bad and having it be necessarily unreliable is not an attractive proposition.

 

[rah]

Agreed, but you have to trust something because the alternative is no source of information. Actual thinking will be required.

 

[Yeekim]

Moral and likely legal to some degree.

If you make a false representation of someone's position/what they said you're spreading false information. There are already moral issues with doing this; it's in the neighborhood of openly lying/making false accusations (depending on what is "said"). Making Carey say "I like the color purple the most" vs "I will commit ____ act of random violence tomorrow" should be viewed differently on both moral and legal grounds. Both are bad, but the latter is much worse.

It would quickly become the case that it is increasingly impossible to discern real video footage from faked when it comes to what people say. It'd be hard to trust anything, and that would suck.

For really compromising stuff you could make slander/libel charges on something like this, but it's problematic before that too.

This is such common sense, really.
I wonder if there is something uniquely American about tying this topic to property rights of all things.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This is such common sense, really.
I wonder if there is something uniquely American about tying this topic to property rights of all things.

Common sense is pretty universally recognized as beyond litigation. Laws governing property rights seem the closest related field. Do you have a better suggestion?

For the record, I considered whether 'putting words in someone's mouth, falsely" could be presented as some variation of assault.

 

[Yeekim]

Common sense is pretty universally recognized as beyond litigation. Laws governing property rights seem the closest related field. Do you have a better suggestion?

For the record, I considered whether 'putting words in someone's mouth, falsely" could be presented as some variation of assault.

From property rights POV, there would be no difference regarding an unedited video of me and a video of me where I'm edited to say something. That you've perceived the latter as a problem, suggests by itself the issue is not with property rights but misrepresentation. At least morally. This being a relatively new possibility, laws may need time to catch up.

 

[Zelig]

Does anyone have a moral position to take and defend here?

Sure! Private ownership of IP (lumping ownership of likeness here for purposes of this discussion, not sure that there's a better term/category) is only morally defensible insofar as it's required to incentivize creation of works for the public good.

Ownership of the likeness of a person should be non-transferable from the person and should revert to public domain upon death of the person (no reason to treat George H.W. Bush differently from Nebuchadnezzar) at the very longest.