[siftrics]

I agree that it's not okay to rob the wealthy simply because they are wealthy.

But this case is more nuanced. A compelling argument can be made against the very idea of robbery of IP. I think the vast majority of "intellectual property" should not, in fact, be anyone's property, and therefore no one can be robbed of it.

Who is harmed and who benefits in the situation where Drake has a lock and key on his IP?

Consumers are harmed --- they clearly enjoy new Drake music regardless of whether or not it was written and sung by Drake, but this is not allowed.

The "AI artist" is harmed --- they could have created something valuable in the world, but this is not allowed.

Drake artificially benefits from a regulatory monopoly. Everyone is strictly worse off because of arbitrary, draconian rules.

A much better example is drug patents. Literally millions of lives could be saved --- and at a lower cost --- if patents didn't exist. Patents and intellectual property are just state-sanctioned monopolies where everyone is harmed and coerced to pay rent to some random asshole.

[bjt2n3904]

Drake's voice isn't intellectual property, it's his own identity.

Drake has a right to decide what his voice says, and have a monopoly on it.

The AI artist is not "harmed" because they can't use Drake's voice.

I can't believe this needs to be said.

[lordnacho]

I think actually if there's an argument for restricting Drake-alikes, it needs to be said.

From my POV as long as you make it clear it isn't actually him, you should be able to do it. What's next, I can't do a parody of Drake either? Should we ban the Nixon-moonlanding-crash video?

Nobody has a unique voice anyway, I'm sure one of those 8B people sounds a lot like Drake. Does that other guy get to decide what songs Drake sings? Of course not, having a specific set of traits should not give you rights over it.

Does Arnel Pineda, who sounds a heck of a lot like Steve Perry, owe Steve a cut of whatever he makes with the band? (Aside from the fact that obviously there's contracts in place.) He's singing his ass off every time he's on stage, just like Steve did when he was the front man for Journey.

In the end this is an argument for the already powerful to stop the newcomer. There's no reason some dude shouldn't be able to do the same work as some other dude, as long as he doesn't pretend to actually be that other guy.

[cool_dude85]

But is that true? If I were a gifted mimic, I couldn't go out and make a song called "Sad in Toronto", even if I was very clear about not actually being Drake?

[rockemsockem]

The op is extremely certain that they have interpreted this law correctly, but the fact of the matter is that a case like the one you describe has never gone through US courts, so we do not know. We are likely to have a court case sometime in the next few years it seems, who knows how long it'll take to get an answer though.

There was a very important and similar case though where Bette Midler sued Ford over inappropriate use of "her" voice performed by an impersonator.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

The context seems important in that case though. Ford had the impersonator sing a song that she herself released! (They had acquired copyright release for that part) So there's no reasonable claim that Bette Midler was not the one they were impersonating.

If you sang a song you wrote in a voice extremely similar to Drake's without mentioning Drake in any way, then that seems very different to me.

[dragonwriter]

A gifted mimic is not a mechanical reproduction. The right of publicity doesn’t protect you from people with similar appearances or voices, it does protect (to a certain extent) against uses of mechanical reproduction of your appearance or voice.

Because it is separate from copyright, US federal statutory fair use considerations don’t apply to this right (I’m not sure to what extent Constitutional fair use might apply to it; statutory fair use in copyright largely recapitulates what were found to be Constitutional limits on the copyright power stemming from the First Amendment, I don’t know if it has ever been considered the extent to which the First Amendment, applied ot the states through the 14th, applies similar restriction on the right of publicity, which is in the US, to the extent it exists, a state-law intellectual property right.)

[l33tman]

He only has this right in some jurisdictions and only over certain types of speech. For example see the cases listed in https://ipwatchdog.com/2020/10/14/voices-copyrighting-deepfa...

[JohnFen]

That's just what the law says. From a human rights point of view, he clearly has the right to determine what his image and voice say or doesn't say.

[siftrics]

I think it's not so clear.

If it's clearly qualified that this is a fabrication of his voice, then what right does he have to control that? He's not being harmed. He's not being misrepresented.

[JohnFen]

I think he is being misrepresented in the song itself. People hearing it will think it's him. Whether or not that's called out in the marketing doesn't seem relevant.

As to harm, I don't know if he's being harmed or not -- but to my mind, that's not an important point. If, as I believe, it's wrong to produce works that show you doing and saying things you didn't do (without your permission), then it's wrong whether or not you were actually harmed by it. And what is harm, anyway? Being embarrassed is a kind of harm.

[siftrics]

There are cases where using someone's voice can harm them, sure. That doesn't mean we should give everyone carte blanche jurisdiction over what can be done with their ideas or their voice.

I think the onus is on the speaker/singer to prove they are being materially harmed by a fabrication of their voice. In many cases, this could be simple: "That fabrication is being used to misrepresent my beliefs AND it's causing me harm." Fair enough. But is someone making a Drake song causing Drake harm? No. He could argue loss of income, but that would be shaky. He didn't come up with the lyrics. He didn't come up with the beat. He didn't even actually sing it. If it's so easy to rip off his voice to create a hit song, then is he actually still losing income? Why doesn't he come up with the hit song?

[ipaddr]

How does this work with twins?

[JohnFen]

It's not about IP theft. It's about identity theft.

[siftrics]

Yeah but identity theft can be dealt with without giving people rent-seeking monopolies. Everyone is worse off except Drake and the argument that he was materially harmed is very shaky at best.

[JohnFen]

I don't think that whether or not he was materially harmed is a relevant question when it comes to the ethics involved.

[siftrics]

I think it is relevant when it comes to the ethics involved.

[ipaddr]

Everyone is better off with less Drake sounding material out there