Washington, D.C – Following the House’s introduction of the NO FAKES Act, Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler issued a statement:

“Yesterday’s introduction of a House companion to the NO FAKES Act is another hasty step in the wrong direction. NO FAKES gives short shrift to the opportunities presented by digital replicas and the free speech rights of their users, while failing to protect the real people who could sign away this broad new digital replica right.” 

Re:Create and a broad cross-section of groups dedicated to balanced copyright and a free and open internet recently raised these concerns in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The legislation would:

• Offer a blunt solution before we understand the problem.
• Endanger expressive platforms and create a classic heckler’s veto.
• Create a licensable, transferable right that endangers depicted individuals and could enable misinformation.
• Restrict speech and threaten living performers with a 70-year post-mortem term of protection.
• Lead to extensive litigation.
• Impermissibly burden First Amendment-protected speech.
• Exceed Congress’s Constitutional authority by expressly creating an IP right in facts.

See here for a white paper elaborating on why NO FAKES exceeds congressional power under the Constitution.