Denmark agreed a likeness safeguard, not yet a statute

The figure or the record

On 26 June 2025, Denmark's Ministry of Culture announced a political agreement, 'Værn mod deling af digitale efterligninger af personlige kendetegn' (A safeguard against sharing digital imitations of personal characteristics), between the governing parties and five opposition parties. The ministry's own announcement and the linked two-page agreement text state the parties agreed to amend the Copyright Act (ophavsretsloven) to add two new protections rather than to create a standalone likeness statute. A follow-up ministry announcement dated 7 October 2025, issued when the Folketing's autumn session opened, placed the resulting bill on the government's legislative programme for handling in early 2026. As of this record's 16 September 2026 retrieval, no further ministry statement confirming enactment was found; this record treats the measure as a still-pending proposal.

What the documents establish

The two-page agreement text describes two distinct protections: a general safeguard for the public against realistic, digitally generated imitations of another person's characteristics, including appearance and voice, shared without consent; and a separate performer's-imitation protection covering an artist's performance itself. The mechanism is civil and platform-facing rather than criminal: the text states explicitly that sharing such content will not carry fines or imprisonment for the individual who shares it, though ordinary Danish tort law could support a damages claim, and the rules are designed primarily to trigger takedown obligations that EU platforms already carry under the Digital Services Act. The Culture Minister's own quoted framing describes the goal as a right to 'one's own body, voice and facial features'.

Scope and caveats

By the agreement's own terms, the rules would apply only to content shared from Denmark; content removed from a platform's Danish-facing service could still appear on the same platform accessed from another country, a limit the ministry's text states plainly rather than glosses over. The agreement is a cross-party political commitment, not a bill introduced in the Folketing, and the October 2025 update describes only an expected timetable for parliamentary handling, not a vote result. Satirical depictions remain explicitly permitted, and the parties note the eventual bill must still be checked against EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights' free-expression guarantee.

What to watch

Editorially, the marker to track is whether the bill described in the government's legislative programme is actually introduced, amended or passed in the Folketing during 2026, since a political agreement and a legislative programme entry are both steps short of an enacted amendment to the Copyright Act.

• Has a bill number been assigned in the Folketing, and has it moved beyond the 'early 2026' handling window the ministry described in October 2025?
• Does the eventual text preserve the civil, DSA-linked takedown mechanism, or add criminal penalties not present in the June 2025 agreement?
• Would content depicting a person for a vertical-drama audience outside Denmark fall outside the territorial scope the agreement's own text describes?

A ministry's political agreement, however specific its terms, is not yet the law it proposes, and this record's status line should be rechecked against the Folketing's own record before being cited as settled Danish law.