Plave: Can you be sued for defaming virtual K-pop stars? South Korea court says yes
www.bbc.com
They may be fictional characters, but they are voiced by real people, the court says.
  • Alexstarfire@lemmy.worldEnglish
    311·
    6 hours ago

    I can’t speak to Korean law, but this seems like a real stupid take. Actors are different from their characters. You can’t damage a character because they aren’t real.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      111·
      5 hours ago

      In a lot of places you can be sued for defaming a company brand, though. This seems similar to that.

    • pathos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      This is in line with korean anti-harassment laws. Seems draconian to us but is entirely consistent with what koreans have been living with for over a decade now.

  • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    anyone know what the claim is to even count as defamation?. That to me seems like what should be the crux.

    IE if the claim was “X’s voice clearly shows he’s dying of cancer.” I could see that as defamation. On the other hand “X is summoning demons” that clearly would be fan-fiction.

  • logicbomb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    6 hours ago

    In July 2024, the defendant targeted Plave in a series of posts - some containing profanity. Among them were comments that the people behind the avatars “could be ugly in real life” and gave off a “typical Korean man vibe”, Korea Times reported.

    Unless the guy said much worse things that weren’t reported, it seems like South Korean defamation laws are draconian.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
    61·
    5 hours ago

    I agree that the comments in question seem like nothing to count as defamation, but actual defamation of virtual bands should count as defamation IMO. They’re as fictional as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz is—every character is one-to-one to their real-life voice actors. Though I guess in that case you might be defaming the voice actor behind the character instead.