Permission is no more required to use faces than it is to sing names.
You can feely sing about McDonald's hamburgers, dress as Ronald McDonald in a music video, or do both at the same time.
Permission only comes into the equation when there's a likelihood of a party believing they're conducting business with a party which they are not (fraud by misrepresentation).
To put it more simply; selling burgers dressed as Ronald McDonald is a bad idea. Selling a song under the name "Eminem" while deepfaking Eminem is a similarly bad idea. Using someone's likeness artistically is, by default, absolutely fine.
Not disagreeing with you, but I am curious about how it works. Singing someone's name feels obviously fine. Dressing as Ronald McDonald though raises some questions on my end.
Aside from "likelihood of a party believing they're conducting business with a party with which they are not", are there any other "rules of thumb" when it comes to this?
What if the owner of Ronald McDonald trademark (apparently, his costume clown face persona+multiple variations of the name are trademarked) didn't like the way the character was portrayed by you or just didn't want you to use it for whichever other arbitrary reason, does their position stand any legal ground? And does their specific reason even matter at all when it comes to this?
MacsHeadroom|3 years ago
You can feely sing about McDonald's hamburgers, dress as Ronald McDonald in a music video, or do both at the same time.
Permission only comes into the equation when there's a likelihood of a party believing they're conducting business with a party which they are not (fraud by misrepresentation).
To put it more simply; selling burgers dressed as Ronald McDonald is a bad idea. Selling a song under the name "Eminem" while deepfaking Eminem is a similarly bad idea. Using someone's likeness artistically is, by default, absolutely fine.
filoleg|3 years ago
Aside from "likelihood of a party believing they're conducting business with a party with which they are not", are there any other "rules of thumb" when it comes to this?
What if the owner of Ronald McDonald trademark (apparently, his costume clown face persona+multiple variations of the name are trademarked) didn't like the way the character was portrayed by you or just didn't want you to use it for whichever other arbitrary reason, does their position stand any legal ground? And does their specific reason even matter at all when it comes to this?
skntp|3 years ago
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