Digital replica of a deceased personality without estate consent

Require an estate or rights-holder consent record, or a reviewer's stored exception determination, on a deceased personality's replica job before it is generated or published.

A check in the job that generates a voice or likeness replica of a deceased personality, repeated at the publish or download step, that requires one of two things attached to the job: a consent or license record from the estate or successor-in-interest for that personality, or an exception determination (news, commentary or parody, documentary or biographical, fleeting or incidental use) made and signed off by a named reviewer. Jobs with neither are refused, and the record id travels with the rendered audio or video so distribution can be traced.

Where it goes: 1 application source code, 2 data models, 6 API calls and integrations.

What reviewers look for: before the clone or swap call on a job that references a deceased person, an estate_consent or rights_holder_consent lookup or a license from the successor_in_interest, or a stored exception classification (news_exception, parody_exception, documentary_exception, incidental_exception) with the reviewer who made it; the same check gates the s3 upload, publish(, or FileResponse of the render.

def render_tribute(job):
    tts.tts_to_file(text=job.script, speaker_wav=job.late_artist_sample,
                    language='en', file_path=job.out_path)
    publish(job.out_path, title=job.title)

def render_tribute(job):
    grant = estate_consent.lookup(personality_id=job.personality_id, use='sound_recording')
    exception = job.exception_determination   # e.g. 'parody_exception', set by a reviewer
    if grant is None and exception is None:
        raise ReplicaBlocked('no estate consent or reviewed exception for this personality')
    tts.tts_to_file(text=job.script, speaker_wav=job.late_artist_sample,
                    language='en', file_path=job.out_path)
    publish(job.out_path, title=job.title,
            rights_ref=grant.id if grant else f'exception:{exception}')

Engineering guidance, not legal advice. Each provision below may add its own details (a cadence, a deadline, a required notice element): open it for those.