It should be covered under "right to publicity" laws [0]. TFA touched on this. These are the laws that prevent people from capitalizing on celebrities' names or likenesses without permission. This is applied even if the person is dead. Impressions of a person's voice generated from actual recordings of the voice is new ground, but it reasonably falls under "likeness."
There are two noteworthy limitations here:
1. The laws require a plaintiff to sue. If Bourdain left control of his public likeness to someone (like a family member or agent), they would have standing. I have no idea if anyone receives them by default if he died without explicitly granting them.
2. You don't need permission for using a person's name or likeness in relevant news or commentary. So this documentary might be protected.
IANAL, so if anyone knows relevant case law, please share.
And, of course, these are just the laws we have now. Whether we need new laws is iffy to me. I can just dislike this documentary using a generated voice because it's deceptive. Bourdain never recorded those words, but people watching the documentary could easily believe otherwise. It's not like TFA's example of a Civil War soldier reading a letter. I know he died before quality voice recording. And many documentaries label readings of modern documents with "Dramatic reading by actor" or similar.
That seems like an impossible thing to do - how would you define "your voice" and how much would it have to be changed to no longer be considered "your voice"?
What would happen between two people that sound similar, or even identical, to our imperfect human senses?
Court precedence. Like pretty much everything else judges would have to define the lines over decades through court cases.
I'm not sure if it should go that way. I don't like the idea that someone like Disney could hire a voice actor once and then steal their voice forever. And it feels like we are headed down that path.
On the flip-side if you could trademark your voice, someone like Disney could buy up a bunch of trademarks and use them to sue somewhat similar voices. Kinda feels like a lose lose scenario.
>someone like Disney could buy up a bunch of trademarks and use them to sue somewhat similar voices. Kinda feels like a lose lose scenario.
That's only if you're using trademarked voices to begin with though, right?
The reason I think trademark needs to exists is because with voice, like an image or wording, comes a value or expectation of value that can be invested into it. Like Bourdain's voice.
