Personal identity meets copyright: Denmark moves to regulate deepfakes in the Copyright Act
Background
The Danish government, with broad cross-party support, has proposed new legislation designed to protect individuals against digital imitations that reproduce personal traits.
At present, the right to one's name and likeness in Denmark is governed in a fragmented manner, drawing on both statutory provisions and unwritten principles of law. The Minister of Culture has stated that he hopes to "export" the new regulation to the EU.
The proposed deepfake bill has attracted international media attention, as Denmark is reportedly the first country in the world to address deepfakes through copyright law.
Overview of the two proposed personality rights
Protection of artists and performers – Section 65a
This proposed personality right is designed to protect against realistic, digitally generated imitations of artists' and performers' artistic performances. The protection does not extend to reproduction of such content, but only to making it available to the public. The new right will be subject to exceptions, including uses for the purpose of parody, caricature, or pastiche.
Protection of personal physical characteristics – Section 73a
This proposed personality right covers all natural persons, not only performers and artists. It will allow anyone to prohibit the making available to the public of realistic, digitally generated imitations of a natural person's personal physical characteristics.
The right is subject to exceptions that are primarily expressions of caricature, satire, parody, pastiche, criticism of power, social criticism or similar purposes, unless the imitation constitutes misinformation that may specifically pose a serious risk to the rights or essential interests of others.
Whereas Section 65a extends to all artists and performers who are citizens or residents of a country within the European Economic Area, Section 73a applies to all natural persons, irrespective of nationality.
As for duration, protection under both Section 65a and Section 73a is proposed to last for 50 years postmortem of the individual concerned.
Plesner's comments
The new deepfake bill is controversial and is being debated for at least two reasons:
First, the introduction of personality rights into copyright law as a tool to address deepfakes is regarded by many commentators as conceptually unsuitable. Copyright law is traditionally aimed at facilitating the dissemination of creative works, whereas the proposed personality rights are designed to restrict the dissemination of certain digital imitations.
Second, the new right for artists and performers is intended to be connected to the much-debated liability regime of Article 17 of the DSM Directive (transposed as Section 52c of the Danish Copyright Act). This connection raises questions regarding compatibility with EU law, concerns that were recently voiced by the Danish Copyright Licensing Tribunal in its decision in LinkedIn v DPCMO (case no. 126) concerning the press publishers' rights (DSM Article 15).
On a general note, the regulation of deepfakes illustrates Denmark's growing appetite for introduction of new regulation within the AI space. Recently, an expert committee on AI and IP delivered 10 recommendations, and further regulation on AI is therefore anticipated.
Expected timeline
A draft bill was published on 7 July 2025 with the consultation phase ending on 21 August 2025. An amended version of the draft bill, which is expected to be the final version, has now been notified to the Commission under the TRIS procedure on 31 October 2025, and it is expected that the bill will be presented in parliament and voted through in Q1/Q2 of 2026. If enacted, the law is expected to into force on 1 July 2026.
Want to know more?
For more information, please contact Emil Jurcenoks or Rasmus Lei Korsgaard.