Ellen Page possibly suing Sony

@darji:

You know what, give me a minute. Let me dust this off. Clear my throat. *ahem*...

lol

I didn't? Has nothing to do with the gender of the individuals, you've made it about gender. So your answer is yes, if I digitally place Michael Rooker's head on a nude body belonging to someone else, you classify that as an invasion of privacy. Well let me tell you, that's bonkers.

They paid Ellen Page for her likeness and there is a nude image bearing Ellen Page's likeness in the game. Whatever hoops one must jump through to see it don't matter because it is still in the game's code regardless, there to be seen.

And the game's code is not a part of the title being passed on to consumers when they make a purchase. The only way to access it is apparently illegal according to Sony (I don't know about that), but your idea that "it doesn't matter how many hoops you have to jump through, because it's there to be seen"... if the only way to access it is illegal actions than Sony is absolutely not in breach of contract. You cannot be made to breach a contract through a third party's criminal behavior. This isn't a gender issue, no matter how much want it to be, it's just how law works. If someone breaks the law, and by breaking the law forces me into breach, I am not legally responsible for the breach. The only thing I could be held for responsible was reasonable caution against it, which is not about breach of contract, but negligence. The thing I've been saying this entire time that you apparently disagree with.

I know you can't resist siding against the woman in any given dispute

Well now you've made this personal and I'm not going to reply to you again until you apologize. Seriously.

If you've been reading this thread, I've stated that Ellen Page might have a case regarding negligence, but not likely breach of contract. The more I consider it though, to prove negligence you'd have to prove damages, and the only damages here are from people who want to write off Ellen Page because there's an image of her face on someone else's body. Just like has been on the internet for years now. She has been no more damaged by this model than by anything you can pull up on Google Image Search.

but you are failing to look at the simple nuts & bolts of the agreement that Quantic Dream and Sony failed to uphold.

Neither of us are privy to the nuts & bolts of the agreement between Quantic Dream and Sony, but while you and leebmx have decided that you know exactly what those details are because you know what you'd like to them to be, I've been waiting to actually hear the details. Evidence first, then judgement.

Your argument about negligence is faulty and irrelevant because 1) they proactively built a detailed nude model which is presumably more difficult than leaving her privates blank and 2) "negligence" isn't a thing that would factor into making the breach of contract less serious and wouldn't shield them from any legal consequences.

There is no evidence of breach of contract, and there is no precedent that having your face digitally placed on another person's body constitutes nudity on the part of the person who the face belongs to. Bringing up "they worked to make a nude body, and that's more work than not doing" and then claiming my understanding of civil and business law is 'irrelevant' is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in about a week and a half. That they worked to model a nude body and put Ellen Page's head on it is absolutely irrelevant to the actual crux of the case, which is the leaking of the images. And once again, I don't think you understand contract law to the degree you believe you do, especially if you think negligence is a 'shield from legal consequences'. Negligence is a civil crime they would be accused of, not a defense against an accusation.

I understand you think pretty fucking low of me, especially if you think I hate one half of the world's population, but if you're going to argue law you should get at least a familiarity with it.

The first part I absolutely don't care about. And you shouldn't either, by making it a different point from her actual consent you're saying that creating nude images by itself is an unethical act. It's not. All that matters is what her contract entails, which I refuse to 'safely assume' has a proviso regarding nudity.

This is the whole thing for me. I get that she may not have grounds in the court because the specific aspects of the character model that broke her contract (reportedly), i.e. the breasts and vagina, were not explicitly model after her. But that this behavior can be anything, at all, besides completely disgusting on the part of Quantic Dreams amazes me.

The only thing I would find disgusting about it is whether or not they agreed not to and then did this. Listen Jason, I'm hard to scandalize. I don't think drawing naked pictures of women is completely disgusting, any more than I would think drawing naked pictures of men is disgusting, or writing stories that involve people fucking is disgusting. The only thing I could possibly find fault in here is if they had an agreement regarding this and it was broken. I understand that you and some other people want to judge the ethics of pornshopping but I wouldn't reach any conclusion regarding pornshopping that I wouldn't reach for any other kind of digital manipulation. It doesn't become this whole different thing for me just because I think someone can get their rocks off to it. I can't make an ethical distinction between putting Michael Rooker's face on a buff soldier, Ellen Page's face on a weird ghost whisperer wearing a hoodie, and Ellen Page's face on a naked body. It is not a scandal to me. Any more than any other actor using a body double during a nude scene. Just because it's been made to make the audience believe it's the real actor's body, does not make that real actor's body nude.

I don't think you're that much older than I am, I'm assuming we both grew up in the age of photoshop. I've been reading a collection of essays called Controversial Images, and one of the first chapters deals with how our interpretations of photographs and photography has changed throughout the years. The ability to capture real images in a lens and get an almost perfect representation of reality changed the world when it was released, but even then photo-doctoring was possible, and now it's de rigeur. It's reached the point where when I see an image, I do not take it as a representation of reality on faith, I need more evidence to disprove tampering. In a previous age, releasing photo-doctored images of someone's nude body (or someone's head on someone's nude body), I could easily see the damages and how difficult it would be to disprove for the person in the image. But we live in an environment where photo-doctoring is now so prevalent that it's expected, and most people have a pretty healthy skepticism about the reality of images they see (at least I hope so). So I couldn't even see this case through the idea that most people believe that she actually got naked and that that would carry some negative impact on her.

That people, not you per say you just happen to be the one I'm quoting, can shrug their shoulders at this, roll their eyes, and just move on blows my fucking mind. Even if the legality is unclear isn't the idea that this behavior is against her wishes bad enough to make us embarrassed for the medium, sad for the actress, and just bothered all around? It does for me. I don't even want to mention this story to people who I know that don't follow games because, honestly, it's shameful. It makes the medium just look childish and completely shitty. Like it's fitting of all the wild beliefs of people who want to bring down video games always use when they start their crusades.

I will fall to a different angle, because I've never looked at any one game as 'embarrassing' the medium. If Ellen Page had in her contract that her nude body would not be shown, and she would not be shown on a nude body, then absolutely, this is pretty cut-and-dry. If she didn't, it gets more complicated, and now it's up to her to prove negative impact on her, and Sony's negligent behavior allowing her to come to harm. And that I don't have nearly enough information regarding. But I'm not going to play the easy game of Decide The Conclusion, Construct Argument.

I'm not going to defend anything Darji says, because that guy has about as much understanding of the mechanics of law and fairness as your average SJW.

(edit) The other thing I want to say regarding this is that if you begin to alter your behavior to avoid being criticized by the unreasonable bullies and petty tyrants of the world, then you might as well just do exactly what they say. Fred Phelps likes to believe that homosexuals all live lives of hedonism, casual sex and drug use. But if I'm gay and I like to have casual sex with strangers, party and do drugs, should I stop doing what I want to in order to prove a petty tyrant wrong, or should I continuing what I want with my own life, and instead ask reasonable people if what I'm doing is so wrong? Let's say we're in the age of Jack Thompson, and he says all games are horrible, violent murder-simulators. Should we a) set 'standards' on ourselves to prevent any violent games from being made and released, in order to prove Jack Thompson wrong, or b) continue making whatever it is we want to make, and ask reasonable people if we're so wrong, who are we hurting, how does our freedom to run over pedestrians in Los Santos cause harm to anyone else? When the various "DEEZ VIDEO GAMES ARE JUST FOR JUVENILE BOYS" crowd starts up, sometimes from within our own medium, should we rush to do everything possible to try to clean ourselves up, polish ourselves, and make ourselves look presentable for broadcast TV, should we just CBS and SpikeTV everything to a mirror shine.... or should we just continue letting people do what they do, and decide what they like?

I would have rather seen Quantic Dream cheap out on the model so that when the camera was moved, all you saw were deep voids of nothingness where boobs and bush would be. Imagine how freaky that would be.

Moreover, I think some of the comments in this thread are downright disgusting. People can say "well, she should know that they were going to make a nude model." However, she apparently didn't, and moreover, Quantic Dream KNEW she had a non-nude clause in her contract. In turn, it means that Quantic Dream should be far more responsible about something like this, especially since they strive for life-like realism.

Ellen Page has been fairly responsible throughout her career in terms of what she will and will not do, and now people want to demonize her because she won't go all Miley Cyrus on the world and instead wants to sue the company responsible for hiring the company that put a realistic-looking nude model with her face attached into a game?

If anything, I think this will be interesting if she DOES sue them, as it would give celebrities the firepower to sue a lot of porn sites out there that post fake celebrity nudes.

More power to Ellen Page on this one.

@brodehouse:

I guess I feel ok assuming that her apparent universal contract that includes 'no nudity' was applied to this game. With that in mind, the disgusting part and the part that is embarrassing is that apparent professional developers ignoring that contract for 'YEAH BOOBS MAN!'. I can't overstate how juvenile I find it. Why this is different from any random fan who creates a nude model or whatever for Lara Croft is that these are professionals that are supposed to represent this medium. They should be held to a higher standard. But apparently they still think 'YEAH BOOBS MAN!' if this behavior is any indication. And that is embarrassing, disgusting, and shitty business. Assuming you believe her contract with this game had 'no nudity' which the way I've heard her contract explained since all this it sounds pretty universal and used across all media.

I truthfully don't blame her, but at SOME POINT she had to know and be on board of its existence. So the blame is not totally on Sony.

Not necessarily. All of her work was done in performance capture gear. She may have been aware of a shower scene in the game, but was under the impression that the scene would not depict anything explicit. Therefore, she would have no reason to believe that a fully nude, anatomically correct model of her (or a model of a body with her head) would be in the game.

I fucking love "Darji Logic."

This guy.

That makes no sense given the fact that she undresses in these scenes as well...... Seriously do you really think that Ellen is that naive not to know about this stuff? Come on even Patrick thinks it is a no case and just stupid.

Scenes containing undressing are not inherently scenes that show graphic nudity.

Oh, wait. It's you. Why am I even bothering?

Have you even seen the scene or how they got these pics? For the scene you had to model a full body since you also see her back legs etc. To get the full frontal shots you need to get into a developer mode (basically a hack) which lets you totally freely move the camera. That is totally normal. Go buy a dev kit use it for God of War 3 for example and you can totally move over the whole levels with this camera.

The only question is why they did put on nipples and pubic hair and for that the easiest explanation is because it is a human body. It has nothing to do with some guy in the office wanted to make a joke or have fun but it is totally normal. There is absolutely nothing juvenile about it .

The fact that this is a celebrity face on a fake body does not change anything.... It is NOT HER body. And they did it with Heavy Rain as well.

Yo y'all are crazy

Darji still isn't banned, huh?

but I guess it would be unfair if crippling ignorance was enough to get banned

I don't care if you respond. In fact I would rather you don't because you're so predispoed to talking down to everyone. You are getting told. All you have to do is absorb my words and understand that they are true. Or don't and carry on with your bad behavior. Everything else you said is repeating the same lies/misconceptions/chest-puffery about how much you think you know everything.

Have a great day.

Wasn't she naked in The Last of Us?

I think if you are in a computer game and you have a clause saying you don't want any nudity then if they make a naked model of your body which is accesable by the general public then they have broken this contract in spirit if not in law. The point here is that it is a computer game, so the nudity is only ever going to be a model rather than the 'real' thing. It could never be her real body because they are not making a film. If she has said she doesn't want to appear naked then making a naked model is surely breaking that contract, surely Sony didn't think that she would be fine as long as they didn't put an actual photo or film of her naked in the game?

The fact is that this game was marketed as Ellen Paige playing Jodie Holmes so I can see how a court might quite easily decide that any depictions of her in the game are as much her as they would be in a movie. After all it is quite concievable to imagine a movie in which they use lots of CG to alter her appearance, which isn't too far away from what we have in Two Souls. Imagine some crafty CG guy working on one of her films digitally removes her clothes for his own amusement and then leaves this data on the DVD able to be accessed by the general pubic. Is there much difference? With the advance of technology it is quite possible to create completely realistic human models. Does this mean that anyone with a no nudity contract can't complain if in post-production they digitally change certain scenes to render them nude? The law obviously has to take a stand somewhere which is what makes this case so interesting. Personally I think she might have a case, especially in a game which explicitly takes her likeness, uses her name, and is made by a director who strives to make games which blur the line with movies.

Obviously we don't know what her position is on this, whether she has the contract or is thinking of taking action, but that is not really what makes it so interesting for me. I expect this will probably be the last we ever hear about it publicly but I find cases like this around digital law really fascinating.

I'm pretty shocked people are actually arguing over who is right here. There is a very simple situation at hand:

1) Ellen Page is very specific about no nudity in anything she takes part in.

2)Quantic knowing about her stance on nudity decided to go ahead and fully realize a naked 3D model of her, proceed to use it in the game, and then go through extra effort to obscure the parts they went out of their way to model.

If you fail to comprehend how Ellen Page might not be ok with having a 3D nude model of herself in a game where her name is plastered all over the cover, and where one of the main selling points was that it's Ellen Page playing the main protagonist then any further discussion is pointless.

Any arguments in the vein of "no man like.. it's not even her man it's like just a 3D model it's not even real.." is idiotic, sorry, and you're an idiot if you can't understand why.

3. You do not even know her contract with QD at all. Maybe she is totally fine with a fake body that had to be rendered anyway for these scenes. And Ellen again has not said anything at all. The only official stuff we have is from Sony that they used a fake body and that they should leave Ellen Page alone

Does it seriously matter if they use a fake body? The fact of the matter is that her HEAD is on a NAKED BODY. Even if that body isn't hers, she can still sue for misrepresentation, as well as breaching her "no nude" contract. You'd have to be completely dense to think that Quantic is in the right.

I am pretty sure it will matter. And what is about this right or wrong thing? There is no evidence or sign of Ellen Page suing Sony/Quantic dream at all. We do not know if Ellen knew about this from the beginning or if it was in her contract. AT this point no one is right or wrong because there is not even a case in the first place.

All we have is ONE small site writing about this. And only on the basis that she has a non nude policy in her movies.Don't you think that sites like Kotaku already would have jumped on this if there was even a case?

While I get that she is upset, suing is just a bit over the top. If we let this sort of thing happen, then we are going to have to say that the whole "hot coffee" mod was Rockstar's fault as well.

Has any male character ever hanged dong in a (mainstream) video game?

A while I posted the same thing about Heavy Rain in which they also modeled nipples and pubic hair for Madision as well as a penis for Nathan for the shower scene. Both of these can also be accessed due to a Dev kit. . Outlast also has some penis in it and if you really search for it GTAV also has some naked bodies including a penis lying around^^

It is not a matter of gender

Apparently she has played Heavy Rain so she had to know that the game might have SOME nudity. I assume that David Cage probably asked her if she was okay with nudity and she agreed only if it's partial(no nipples or bare bums). Without knowing her personally, i'd like to believe that her no nudity clause is more about class than her not being comfortable with her body.

Interesting thing i just realized, Sony released a patch for the game which removed some nudity. I could recall there being a top down shower shot in the Navajo chapter and it's not there post patch.

I can't take screenshots but i can say that it is very blurry so all you really see is her feet. I wonder if Ellen Page saw that and got offended so that's why they put out the patch.

In the GTA IV DLC The Ballad of Gay Tony there's a fully visible dong

@gargantuan: I think it was Lost and Damned.

First off, I’m not taking any sides whether it be Sony, Ellen Page, or Quantic Dream…

But, here’s some background that I think might be intersting…

I work as a character artist in the game industry. One of the questions that comes up during our production meetings is:

Should we make the entire character including the nude body?

As artists, we usually say “yes”

The reason for this is to actually lessen the work required to make a character.

Since many characters change their clothes from completely covered (shirt, pants) to shorts, tank top, swimwear, etc – it’s often much easier to make a “nude” body because it serves as a base from which we can put different clothes/apparel on. Once the nude body is done, all we have to do change the clothes to fit the situation for that character.

The next question is:

Should they have modeled Ellen Page’s body at all knowing that she should never be seen without clothes?

That depends..

In today’s world where people can hack into games it’s often a good idea to permanently put “underwear-textures” on the “nude” body – so that even if someone hacks the game, all they would get is a person wearing their underwear. Essentially, there would be no “nude” body in that case. –That’s what I usually do to cover my own butt from being blamed if someone hacks the game.

@kunoh: Thx for the insight^^

This was what I was trying to articulate but I think you said it even more succinctly. I think that the smart thing to do, if this contract clause actually exists/existed, is to make a model that has less texturing on the breasts and pubic area or perhaps as you stated, some sort of underwear texture. This would be to cover their butts, as you put it, even if they think that a fully modeled and textured figure is technically "better" for them as an artist. There comes a point in these kind of negotiations, I gather, where you may have to put your own artistic vision to the side (namely full frontal nudity of the actress perhaps) to get the famous and respected actress to agree to act in your game.

I understand that this was hacked and not the game as intended, but I wonder if a judge or lawyers will actually be able to make a distinction or if there is legal ground to make those kinds of distinctions. I work with lawyers and judges and while some are technically savvy, a lot are not. This is even more of a murky area to me than other high tech issues that have been argued in our court, both civil and criminal. My main thought is why in the world would QD want to open themselves up to this? It would be safer, as you stated, to go with a less detailed model from knees to busts than to allow yourself to be open to litigation.

I wonder if anyone at QD thought to mention the shower scene with implied nudity to Page or did they think some tasteful editing would cover their butts?

This seems like a weird quagmire. Is QD liable for people breaking open their game and extracting unused portions of it? If they agreed to a no nudity clause but then wrote a scene where someone with Ellen Page's likeness was -for the purposes of rendering the scene- actually fully nude, does that make them in breach of that agreement?

Did QD have a reasonable expectation that no one would have been able to access that content? Is that even relevant now that the people have accessed it and that model is pretty much openly available to anyone with an internet connection?

To access this you have to hack the console and that would be as i legal as smuggling put nude pics form a film set. So I think it is not their responsiblity in the end.

Aren't they liable for whatever content is put on that disc though? Whether its illegal for someone to access it seems like a moot point. They created something that in a certain context could be seen as a breach of contract and included it in retail copies of the game. That's like a bank storing plain text passwords on a 'secure' server. If somehow, someway, those passwords get out, the bank can't just throw their arms up in the air and claim they took every precaution. They would be liable to some degree.

I really do not know to be honest. It would be a first for such a thing though especially since this is not her body or even made after her body.

Well someone decided to live out their fantasy.

"Dude we totally got all of Ellen Page's measurements!"

"So?"

"Remember that shower scene we did in Heavy Rain?"

...