What If the United States Made Your Voice and Likeness Your Property?

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inAI and the Legal System, Court Reporting, Judicial Ethics Watch, Legal ServicesTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How a Denmark-Style Law Could Transform the Courtroom — and Revive Stenography

A Global First: Denmark’s Bold Move

In mid-2025, Denmark announced a groundbreaking proposal: to legally recognize an individual’s body, face, and voice as their own property. The measure, framed as a copyright-style right, would give citizens the power to demand takedowns of unauthorized likenesses and to seek financial compensation when their voice or image is used without consent. If passed this fall, Denmark would become the first country in the world to codify likeness and voice as owned intellectual property, directly targeting the misuse of deepfakes and AI voice cloning.

For the legal profession, this is more than an intriguing European experiment. If such a law were adopted in the United States, it would send shockwaves through our litigation system — particularly in the realm of court reporting and transcript production.

Deepfakes: An Emerging Legal Threat

Why is Denmark taking this step? The answer is the exponential growth of deepfakes. AI can now generate lifelike video and audio imitations of real people, often indistinguishable from authentic recordings.

  • In politics, fabricated clips of leaders have circulated online, sowing confusion and disinformation.
  • In entertainment, actors’ likenesses are being replicated in unauthorized films and voice performances.
  • In everyday life, ordinary citizens are seeing their voices or faces hijacked for scams, pornography, or impersonation schemes.

The legal system is not immune. Imagine:

  • A fabricated deposition video showing a witness “confessing” to something they never said.
  • A falsified courtroom audio clip used to cast doubt on trial records.
  • AI-generated “expert testimony” that appears legitimate but never occurred.

If your voice and likeness were protected property, you could demand that these forgeries be removed and compensated. But without such protections, victims of deepfakes face an uphill battle under current U.S. privacy and defamation law.

What It Would Mean for ASR and Digital Court Reporting

Nowhere would a U.S. adoption of this law be felt more directly than in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and digital reporting systems.

Today, many agencies rely on recording court proceedings and running them through AI engines for transcription. But under a Denmark-style framework:

  1. Consent Would Be Mandatory
    Every party in the courtroom — attorneys, witnesses, jurors, and judges — would need to explicitly authorize recording and AI processing of their voice.
  2. Royalties Could Apply
    If ASR systems depend on capturing and processing those voices, the law might require payment of per-speaker royalties, making transcripts far more expensive to produce than through stenography.
  3. Training Data Becomes Legally Risky
    Current ASR models rely on vast datasets of recorded human speech, often compiled without consent. Such a law could trigger massive legal exposure for vendors that used voice data unlawfully.
  4. Platform Liability Increases
    Agencies or tech providers that fail to secure proper consent could face lawsuits, takedown demands, or regulatory fines.

For digital reporting companies, these changes would add layers of legal risk, compliance cost, and administrative complexity.

Why Stenographers Become the Gold Standard

Contrast this with stenographers. Court reporters do not need to record anyone’s voice to produce a transcript. Instead, they capture the record through shorthand writing and real-time translation, sidestepping the entire consent and royalty issue.

This gives stenographers a decisive competitive advantage in a future where voice is legally protected property. Attorneys and judges would know that transcripts produced by a stenographer:

  • Carry no hidden licensing costs for voices.
  • Do not rely on recordings that could be manipulated, leaked, or misused.
  • Provide a human-certified chain of custody that AI simply cannot replicate.

For sensitive matters — trade secrets, celebrity trials, or criminal proceedings — stenographers would become the safest and most defensible choice.

The Risk of Appeals and Evidence Challenges

If recordings are made without valid consent, transcripts generated from them could become vulnerable to challenge. Imagine an appeal where a witness argues that their likeness was unlawfully captured and processed, rendering the transcript tainted.

Attorneys already know how small procedural errors can unravel years of litigation. Voice property laws could open an entirely new category of technical challenges to ASR-based transcripts. Choosing stenographers avoids this hazard entirely.

Broader Impacts on the Legal System

A U.S. law protecting voice and likeness as property would reshape more than just the reporting market.

  • Witness Protection: Vulnerable witnesses could prevent their testimony from being replicated or misused.
  • Attorney-Client Privilege: Audio recordings of confidential discussions would become legally fraught, reinforcing the need for stenographic, non-recorded records.
  • Expert Testimony: Experts might demand premium licensing fees if their recorded voice becomes an asset others can reuse.
  • Insurance and Liability: Agencies using recordings would need specialized liability coverage for voice rights violations.

Why Attorneys Should Care Now

Even before such a law passes in the U.S., the growing threat of deepfakes should make attorneys pause. If a litigant can produce an AI-generated clip that contradicts a transcript, the credibility of the entire legal process is at stake. Only stenographers — acting as officers of the court — can create a tamper-proof, human-verified record.

Stenographic reporting is not just a tradition; it is a bulwark against manipulation, disinformation, and fraud in an AI-saturated era.

Preparing for a Voice-Rights Future

Attorneys can take steps today to prepare for this possible future:

  1. Audit Your Reporting Providers
    Ask whether your depositions and hearings are recorded, how that data is stored, and whether consent is properly documented.
  2. Prefer Stenographic Services
    Reduce exposure by choosing stenographers who provide accurate transcripts without voice recordings.
  3. Educate Clients
    Explain to clients — especially corporate and high-profile individuals — the risks of having their voice or likeness recorded and potentially misused.
  4. Support Policy Advocacy
    Bar associations and professional organizations should be considering the implications of deepfakes and supporting measures that preserve transcript integrity.

Conclusion: A Legal Landscape Poised to Shift

If the United States follows Denmark’s lead, court reporting will be one of the most directly impacted professions. Digital recording and ASR systems would face a maze of licensing, consent, and liability issues. Stenographers, on the other hand, would emerge as the clear, compliant, and trusted standard.

In an era where deepfakes are undermining truth itself, stenographers remain what they have always been: the human safeguard ensuring that justice rests on a reliable, unassailable record.

StenoImperium
Court Reporting. Unfiltered. Unafraid.

Disclaimer

“This article includes analysis and commentary based on observed events, public records, and legal statutes.”

The content of this post is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. All opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are based on publicly available information, industry standards, and good-faith concerns about nonprofit governance and professional ethics. No part of this article is intended to defame, accuse, or misrepresent any individual or organization. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and to engage constructively in dialogue about leadership, transparency, and accountability in the court reporting profession.

  • The content on this blog represents the personal opinions, observations, and commentary of the author. It is intended for editorial and journalistic purposes and is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
  • Nothing here constitutes legal advice. Readers are encouraged to review the facts and form independent conclusions.

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Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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