Click to Sell Your Face: How Denmark’s Deepfake Law Could Backfire Without a Transfer Ban
By Don @ DarkAIDefense.com
Denmark is on the verge of passing one of the most progressive deepfake laws in the world. The proposed legislation, unveiled on June 26, 2025, seeks to grant individuals copyright-style protections over their face, voice, and likeness—giving them the right to demand removal of unauthorized deepfake content and seek compensation (The Guardian).
While the law is intended as a safeguard against non-consensual deepfakes and should be well lauded. However framing identity as a copyrightable asset carries a hidden risk: the risk that individuals may unintentionally relinquish control over their likeness through standard-form agreements. This needs to be protected against at all costs!
From Protection to Commodification
Copyright grants creators exclusive control over their works but also permits the transfer or sale of those rights. Denmark’s proposal incorporates this legal regime into personal identity: it treats face, voice, and body as objects of copyright. This could inadvertently pave the way for licensing or sale of one’s likeness.
The Shrinkwrap Trap
Most users never read the terms of service for social media or AI platforms—but legally, these clickwrap or shrinkwrap agreements can include clauses transferring rights (Fast Company, WilmerHale). If likeness becomes a copyrighted asset, such agreements could grant platforms and third parties broad rights to use, sub-license, or monetize your identity—without your explicit understanding.
What Copyright Law Allows Today
Under copyright law, rights holders can:
- Assign ownership
- License usages
- Permit sub-licensing
- Waive enforcement rights via contractual agreement
Tech platforms like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube already use terms that allow them to leverage and license user content. Extending this to likeness rights could lower the barriers to corporate control over your voice, your likeness, and key elements of your identity.
Moral Rights vs Economic Rights
A critical legal distinction exists in Danish Law: moral rights are personal and non-transferable, while economic rights are assignable. Denmark’s proposal does not clarify whether likeness protections are moral (inalienable) or economic (transferable) (LinkedIn Commentary). Without that clarification, courts may interpret likeness rights as transferable property under existing copyright laws.
A Future of License Cascades
This is not hypothetical. Imagine a scenario where:
- An artist uploads content and agrees to a platform’s terms granting broad usage rights.
- The platform sub-licenses their likeness to an AI company.
- The AI company generates content or trains from their likeness and creates a voice over for a chatbot—and claims it has permission.
Under existing copyright principles, such licensing chains are legally valid.
Policy Recommendations
- Define likeness rights as moral rights, explicitly non-transferable.
- Prohibit waiver via standard-form contracts like clickwrap agreements.
- Demand explicit, informed, revocable consent for any licensing.
- Require transparency and reporting from platforms using likeness data.
- Establish rights to audit and revoke unauthorized uses.
Proposed Legal Language
To ensure robust protections, the final legislation could include:
No person shall be deemed to have transferred, licensed, or waived their right to control the use of their image, likeness, or voice under any standard-form contract, clickwrap agreement, or terms of use, unless such transfer is made knowingly, with explicit, written consent, and is revocable upon request.
This would help to safeguard identity rights against being buried in unreadable legal text.
Conclusion
Denmark’s deepfake law is a pioneering effort to restore agency over identity in the age of synthetic media. However, if it couches those protections entirely within copyright’s transferable framework, it risks enabling the very commodification and legal exploitation it seeks to prevent. Without explicit transfer bans, individuals may unintentionally click their rights away.
Energy use disclosure: Creating this article consumed approximately 0.45 kWh—enough to power a 100-watt light bulb for 4.5 hours.