Live Sports Virtual Reality Broadcasts: Copyright and Other Protections

As virtual reality rapidly progresses, broadcasts are able to increasingly mimic the experience of actually attending a game. As the technology advances and the viewer can freely move about the game and virtual reality can simulate the in-stadium attendance, the virtual reality broadcast nears the point where the broadcast is indistinguishable from the underlying game. Thus, novel copyright protection issues arise regarding the ability to protect the experience through copyright. Although normal broadcasts may be copyrighted, virtual reality broadcasts of live sports could lack protection under the Copyright Act because the elements of originality, authorship, and fixation are harder to satisfy for this type of work. If the elements that formerly protected broadcasts through copyright no longer apply, the virtual reality broadcast of the game will lose copyright protection. The virtual reality broadcaster can receive protection for the work in several ways, such as (1) by broadcaster-made modifications to the transmitted broadcast, (2) through misappropriation claims, or (3) by inserting contract terms. These additional steps maintain the ability of virtual reality broadcasters to disseminate works without fear the work will not be protectable by the law

Magic Johnson and HIV

Just over a week ago rumors swept through the media that Ervin Magic Johnson was about to retire from professional basketball because he had AIDS. A few hours later Johnson appeared at a press conference to confirm the rumor of his retirement. He said he did not have AIDS, but rather he had tested positive for the HIV virus, a precursor to AIDS. It is a virtual certainty that Johnson will contract AIDS within the next decade. Because he had tested HIV positive, it was determined that medically it would be wise for him to retire from basketball

Cultural dialects of real and synthetic emotional facial expressions

In this article we discuss the aspects of designing facial expressions for virtual humans (VHs) with a specific culture. First we explore the notion of cultures and its relevance for applications with a VH. Then we give a general scheme of designing emotional facial expressions, and identify the stages where a human is involved, either as a real person with some specific role, or as a VH displaying facial expressions. We discuss how the display and the emotional meaning of facial expressions may be measured in objective ways, and how the culture of displayers and the judges may influence the process of analyzing human facial expressions and evaluating synthesized ones. We review psychological experiments on cross-cultural perception of emotional facial expressions. By identifying the culturally critical issues of data collection and interpretation with both real and VHs, we aim at providing a methodological reference and inspiration for further research

Spartan Daily, March 6, 2018

Volume 150, Issue 17https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2018/1016/thumbnail.jp

“You Must Construct Additional Pylons”: Building a Better Framework for Esports Governance

The popularity of “esports,” also known as “electronic sports” or competitive video gaming, has exploded in recent years and captured the attention of cord-cutting millennials—often to the detriment of sports such as basketball, football, baseball, and hockey. In the United States, the commercial dominance of such traditional sports stems from decades of regulatory support. Consequently, while esports regulation is likely to emulate many aspects of traditional sports governance, the esports industry is fraught with challenges that inhibit sophisticated ownership and capital investment. Domestic regulation is complicated by underlying intellectual property ownership and ancillary considerations such as fluctuations in a video game’s popularity. Since analogous reform is nigh impossible, nascent governance organizations have been created to support the professionalization of esports as a new entertainment form. As esports consumption continues to grow, enterprising stakeholders are presented with the unique opportunity to create regulatory bodies that will shape the esports industry. This Note analyzes how the professional sports industry and foreign esports markets have addressed governance challenges that arise from differences between traditional sports and competitive video gaming. It concludes by exploring two potential pathways for domestic esports governance. View PD