Florida Joker is in the news again, this time demanding to speak with Rockstar Games, or to be given $1-2 million over his likeness in GTA 6.
Florida Joker is in the news again, this time demanding to speak with Rockstar Games, or to be given $1-2 million over his likeness in GTA 6.
Put yourself in his shoes for a second. You have appeared on TV over something you did. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Then you realize some game company that’s making a parody of the society you live in use your image and personality traits that are directly identifiable to you to create a character that parodies YOU. And they put this other YOU in various scenarios that you may or may not agree with. And they’re going to pull a hefty profit from using this version of YOU while you don’t receive a penny.
Does that sound fair?
Yes? They’re not using his likeness, they’re using a parody.
Should Trump be compensated if they use a parody of him in a video game? E.g. should Trump profit from this game?
I can understand if they use an actual likeness, but a parody isn’t an actual likeness, it’s a new character that’s a satirized version of an actual person, so their actions in game wouldn’t be construed to match the actions of the satirized person. That’s how parody works, and it’s absolutely protected speech and doesn’t require compensation.
Ah. Good point. You might be right. Well we’ll see how it turns out.
This guy is just a guy, trump is a ex-preseident. If Rockstar was “parodying” a sick old man and uaing their likeness in agame that they will gain incredible amounts of money from would that be okay? If they’re adding a version of this guy in a game that’s identifiable that its him, than he needs to be compensated or straight up not consent to this bullcrap and Rockstar shpuld be removing him from their gsme. Calling it parodying doesn’t make it okay snd parodying a political figure is totally different from using the likeness of some guy with tattoos in their game.
Use of someone’s likeness without their permission isn’t illegal in and of itself, it’s only illegal if it causes them some form of harm, in which case it is defamatory. And this wasn’t even an exact replication of anyone’s likeness, but instead a similar but quite different rendition, to the point where it’s absurd to think that any of the actions portrayed by the character are defamatory to the original person.
Yeah, it’s weird, but from my understanding there’s nothing illegal about it. I could design a model based on a sick old man I saw at a hospital or something, and as long as my use of that model is not defamatory or otherwise causes harm to this individual, it’s fair use. That’s the law. It would be weird, but AFAIK totally legal.
And yeah, parodying a political figure is different, it’s just the one I could find. You can still be sued for defamation against a political or other public figure, and in fact that’s probably more likely, though the burden for a political figure is a bit higher (i.e. criticizing their policies is usually protected speech, even if otherwise defamatory in nature).
It’s a likeness, not the same. It’s a parody which is clearly covered by law and there are thousands of similar examples.