It's there any copyright protections for a person's voice? If not, David Attenborough and Morgan Freeman will be lead voice actors in my next game project
The only possible voice I can think of that I would be certain it could have this kind of protection right now is actually Majel Barret-Roddenberry. She apparently did a lot of voice recording specifically to let this kind of thing happen. What I couldn't fathom is what would happen if something like this was used to mimic someone else's voice that hadn't agreed to such a thing.
There was an advert on TV in the UK and Ireland for an insurance company called MoreThan. They had a Morgan Freeman impersonator who ended the ad by saying "I'm Morethan Freeman". I seem to recall a legal kerfuffle but I can't find anything online about it.
If nothing else the source material you use would likely be recordings that others made, so you will not own the copyright on the source material and with how copyright works the synthesized recordings might be considered derivative works of the source material. IANAL, TINLA.
I don't think you can claim that your game was voiced by either of them, but I don't see how using this would be any more infringing than using a tuned synthesizer.
Actually i wasn't planning on saying either, just having the calm voice of Morgan Freeman tell me i need shoot the zombies or whatever the game will be, and then David explaining with fascination how such a poor shot could have survived this far whenever you miss
It's not copyright, but a 'right of publicity.' It's an interesting area of law, although I don't feel like doing a write-up right now. Basically you can't use a celebrity's likeness to imply endorsement; otherwise you'd see a lot more advertising with cartoon versions of famous people. This technology won't affect courts very much as it's just another kind of likeness.
This. I would assume copying a voice pattern is treated no different from copying an appearance. If a 3D model is a very close approximation to a particular person's face and you use it in a game intentionally to benefit from that person's likeness, you can run into legal issues. And of course you really open yourself up for a lawsuit if you then attach the real person's name to it.
EDIT: See the NPR Planet Money podcast linked elsewhere in the comments. Apparently there are fairly specific laws to protect someone's likeness -- including their voice -- thanks to the entertainment industry and Frank Sinatra.
Tom Waits sued for this reason multiple times [1].
I guess he had a strong case because in all three cases he was (or so he claimed) approached to do a commercial and the advertisers went with a Waits-like surrogate after he declined.
I wouldn't try it without heavy modification of the voice. Since for example a Morgan Freeman earns money with his voice, you've effectively robbed him of income (even though there's virtually no chance that he'd have participated).
I was thinking of creating a large corpus of my voice, as well as a few of my friend's voices, and licensing it under creative commons or the public domain. Perhaps we can get an early start on making this technology familiar and acceptable before lawyers start to shut us down.
In the UK there's a common law thing called "passing off" that's used to protect unregistered IP from impersonation. It's already used to protect unauthorised abuse of voice actors IP.
I'm pretty sure "passing off" requires the seller to be fraudulently claiming the goods are the goods of someone else, that if you up-front say "the voices used are generated by computer algorithm and do not represent any real person" that a claim of passing off would be rendered moot.
Trademark/Copyright can't be disclaimed in this way but Passing Off requires active deception AIUI?
You're right that being clear to avoid confusion is a good preventative measure, but you're wrong that intent to defraud is required. It's enough that the public is (or is likely to be) confused.
See Reckitt v Borden (1990) judgement referring to the three-part test for claims of passing off (my emphasis):
"Second, he must demonstrate a misrepresentation by the defendant to the public (whether or not intentional) leading or likely to lead the public to believe that goods or services offered by him are the goods or services of the plaintiff"
