The NO FAKES Act Could Silence Satire, Commentary, And News

The NO FAKES Act is supposed to target harmful AI-generated impersonations. But in reality, it will make it easier to suppress commentary, satire, and other lawful speech. That’s why EFF has signed a letter urging the Senate Judiciary Committee not to advance the bill in its current form.

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Tell Congress to Say No to NO FAKES

In the letter, EFF joins a coalition of civil society groups in pointing out that the bill would import many of the worst features of the DMCA notice-and-takedown system into an even broader range of online expression. Faced with a “heckler’s veto” over legal speech, platforms will have incentives to remove content first and ask questions later. 

The bill offers no protection for a platform’s judgment about an often difficult question—whether a particular piece of content is satire, parody, commentary, or news. Any platform that guesses wrong faces penalties of up to $750,000 per work. 

NO FAKES could also undermine the rights of the people it is supposed to protect. The new federal “likeness” right could be licensed or transferred to others, so individuals will lose control over the use of their own face and voice. That’s not theoretical—workers in the entertainment industry are routinely asked to sign broad contracts about the future use of their likenesses.

As the letter notes: 

A background actor who signs a release on set or an ordinary person who clicks through a platform’s terms of service could end up with the right to their own face and voice in someone else’s hands, for years, with federal enforcement behind it. 

EFF and the other signatories urge Congress to examine existing legal remedies and pursue narrowly tailored solutions to genuine harms. The last thing we need is a sweeping new intellectual property right that threatens free expression. 

In addition to EFF, the letter is signed by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union, Fight for the Future, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Organization for Transformative Works, Public Knowledge, the R Street Institute, The Future of Free Speech, and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. Read the full letter here. 

Take action

Tell Congress to Say No to NO FAKES