Denmark’s new copyright law offers protection against deepfakes

The government hopes Europe will follow its lead when it enacts statutory rights to its citizens appearance in its new, amended copyright law.

The idea is to ensure that people’s identities are protected against use in deepfakes, which is defined as very realistic digital representations of real people, including their appearance and voice, writes The Guardian.

Aslo an issue in Hollywood
This has been an issue for Hollywood actors for many years, and they were the first workers to get their rights to their likeness enshrined in union contracts.

The Danish law goes further, and says all people should have this right enshrined in the law of the land, which is a first of its kind.

— Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I’m not willing to accept that, says Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt to The Guardian.

Power to remove images and videos
The law is intended to give Danish people the right to demand that online platforms remove infringing content that’s shared without consent.

Platforms that don’t comply with this new law, would get «severe fines.»

The law has broad cross-party consent, and is scheduled as a proposal before summer. Then an amended bill will be submitted to The Folketing in the autumn.

The hope after that is to use the recurring EU presidency, which falls to Denmark in 2026, to inform and argue for the new law to perhaps get taken up by EU proper.

«Intimate» deepfakes were forbidden by a new law in the USA in mid may.

Read more: The Guardian broke the news internationally, CNN fills in details, and writeups at TechCrunch and Time.