Legal and Organizational Issues in Collaborative User-Created Content

Introduction In this paper we look into issues that arise when people collaboratively create digital content and want to publicly distribute it. We identify and analyze the issues based on four case studies on amateur content production. In our analysis we discuss the issues both from the amateurs’ point of view, and also, from the game brand owners’ perspective. User-created content (UCC) in games has become popular as demonstrated by game-related skins, mods and extensions, screenshots, gameplay videos, game narratives, walk-throughs, websites, articles, fan art, as well as tools for creating the content. Often UCC is a collaborative activity where people share their expertise and skills, and the organization of groups into larger communities can even more advance the quality and distribution of the created material. Communities of amateur content creators can create an identity and a virtual location around their activity (e.g., a website), which can act as a publicity and distribution channel for the content, as well as a discussion forum, knowledge pool, and a place for socializing. However, as the collaborative work starts to gain popularity and move towards more professional production, legal and organizational issues arise that even amateur content creators should address. These issues include decisions on commercialization of the content creation activity, intellectual property rights within the content creators, the brand image of the content or the group, and managing the liability risks in content production. These issues can be critical for the existence of the content creation community, and are often largely ignored until they manifest themselves with negative consequences. Case Studies Two of the four cases in our study are computer game related: user-created fan websites for Habbo Hotel, and user-created game worlds for Neverwinter Nights. The other two cases are not directly game-related: a micro-movie producer community Blauereiter, and an electronic publication The Melrose Mirror. The last two examples were chosen to illustrate aspects arising from amateur media content production that may become more relevant for game-related UCC in the future. Habbo Hotel is a virtual meeting place on the Internet where the gamers can create their own characters, and a hotel room for their character where other characters can visit. Habbo Hotel is owned and developed by Sulake Inc, and it has 2,3 million users worldwide. Habbo Hotel has a devoted fan community that publishes their own fan web pages that are graphically and thematically similar to the Habbo Hotel. Currently Sulake is strongly controlling the contents of the fan sites by forcing the closing of unwanted fansites because of game brand and IPR issues. Neverwinter Nights is a commercial multi-player adventure game developed by BioWare Inc. The game includes a set of tools for gamers to create their own characters, adventures, and worlds. These user-created worlds are hosted by the creators themselves. For other people to play these worlds they must have the Neverwinter Nights game installed on their PC. BioWare has announced their plan to sell user-created game modules, hence opening questions about the commercialization of UCC. Blauereiter is community for discussing and distributing micromovies. Micromovies are short movies made especially for handheld devices with small screens. The community was established in Finland in 2002 to promote students’ micromovies and to have a knowledge sharing website. The website also has the community rules, where it is stated that the community manages the rights, marketing, and distribution of its members’ movies and potential profits. According to the rules the community makes decisions and changes relating to the rules. However, the rules or the website do not explicitly state what or who are the community, how can members affect the community decision making, or how potential revenues are distributed within the community. The Melrose Mirror is an electronic newspaper collaboratively published by a group of senior citizens in Massachusetts, USA. The community has been active since 1996, and has over the years collaboratively produced several thousands of articles and images about the history and current life in Melrose, as well as personal opinions and stories of the authors. The editorial staff, which consists of a sub-group of all contributors, selects the articles and pictures for publication. However, the group has not decided to formally organize their own activity. The members have decided that the opinions in the publication strictly reflect the views of the individual creators, and the copyrights to the material belong to the individual contributors. The decisions regarding issues such as advertising on the website, usage of computers, and opinions about the website content are debated in the group meetings. Conclusions From the case studies we identified and analyzed the issues these particular examples had in creating and publishing user-created content. Two of the communities had a direct relation to commercial stakeholders and their brands and technology. In the other two communities the media was created independent of direct third party connections. Based on these cases we argue that the main legal issues and concerns in collaborative creation of content are decision making and liability. The decision making issues can be further identified as the distribution of potential revenues, deciding on a licensing policy for the content, and the re-publication of content. The liability issues can be specified as infringement of intellectual property rights (i.e., copyrights, patents, and trademarks), publication of illegal material (i.e., defamatory or racist material, child pornography), and the distribution of technically damaging content (i.e., computer viruses). The liability issues are relevant irrespective whether the act is intentional or not. These issues are especially significant if the created content has commercial value, but the issues must be addressed also in non-profit creation and distribution. Based on the identification and analysis we discuss the solutions that legal systems provide to these issues. Mainly, we look into traditional forms of organization, such as corporation, association, and trust, and discuss how these different legal forms of organizations could be applied to collaborative content creation. We also discuss what further issues arise in applying these legal forms of organization into a novel way of global collaboration using digital technology

Käyttäjäkeskeisen metatiedon suunnittelu digitaaliseen näppäilykuvaukseen

With digital cameras, camera phones, and camcorders connected to personal computers and the Internet, people are capturing, sharing, and storing more and more media created by themselves. This has created the organizing challenge called media management problem: how to browse and find media from the growing personal media collections. Metadata is seen as one of the most promising technologies to address this problem. Previous work on metadata design has focused on public or commercially produced media – not on media created by consumers for themselves or their social networks. Taking snapshot photography as a starting point, this dissertation looks into the media management problem from a user-centric design perspective. In this work, three consecutive systems were designed: MMM-1, MobShare, and PhotosToFriends. Each of these systems was evaluated in extensive user trials. The objective of the user trials was to provide a better understanding of the uses people have for mobile photos and metadata. The results gained from constructing the systems and the associated user trials are divided into three. First, they contribute to understanding social uses for mobile photographs: what was photographed, with whom were the photos shared, and what kind of social activity emerged. Second, the results can be applied into designing systems for photo sharing: the use of galleries, control over sharing, support for discussions, and social awareness and notifications. Third, what are the implications for metadata that the social uses and system design have. The main implications are the inherent problem of personal photo information being contextual, dynamic, and highly semantic, and the strong coupling of metadata and its application. To address these problems we propose the concept of social metadata, which takes advantage of the social activity in photo sharing systems. The user-centric design approach also brings forth that content metadata generation should be approached from several angles – social metadata, user tagging and contextual information – in addition to the more traditional content-based analysis.Digitaalikameroiden, kamerapuhelimien ja digitaalisten videokameroiden ollessa nykyään yhdistettynä kotitietokoneiseen ja sitä kautta Internetiin ihmiset luovat, jakavat ja tallentavat entistä enemmän itse tekemäänsä mediaa. Tämän seurauksena on syntynyt organisointihaaste, jota kutsutaan henkilökohtaisen median hallintaongelmaksi: kuinka selata mediaa tai löytää sieltä haluamansa media? Metatietoa pidetään yhtenä lupaavimmista teknologisista ratkaisuista tähän ongelmaan. Aikaisempi tutkimus metatiedon suunnittelussa on keskittynyt julkiseen tai kaupalliseen mediaan – ei mediaan, jonka kuluttajat luovat itselleen tai sosiaaliselle verkostolleen. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii median hallintaongelmaa käyttäjäkeskeisestä näkökulmasta, jossa lähtökohtana on näppäilyvalokuvaus. Tässä työssä rakennettiin kolme peräkkäistä järjestelmää: MMM-1, MobShare ja PhotosToFriends. Kukin näistä järjestelmistä evaluoitiin kattavilla käyttäjäkokeilla, joiden tavoitteena oli laajentaa ymmärrystä ihmisten mobiilikuvien käytöstä sekä metatiedosta. Järjestelmien rakentamisesta ja niihin liittyvistä käyttäjäkokeista saadut tulokset voidaan jakaa kolmeen osaan. Ensiksi, tulosten kautta voidaan paremmin ymmärtää mobiilikuvien sosiaalista käyttöä: mitä kuvattiin, keille kuvia jaettiin ja minkälaista sosiaalista toimintaa syntyi. Toiseksi, tuloksia voidaan käyttää kuvienjakojärjestelmien suunnittelussa: gallerioiden käyttö, jakamisen kontrollointi, keskustelun tukeminen sekä tietoisuus ja tiedottaminen sosiaalisesta aktiivisuudesta. Kolmanneksi, mitä seuraamuksia kahdella edellisellä kohdalla on metatiedon suunnittelulle. Tärkeimmät seuraamukset ovat se, että henkilökohtainen tieto on kontekstuaalista, dynaamista ja semanttista, ja metatiedon sekä sitä käyttävien sovellusten välillä on vahva keskinäinen liitos. Näiden ongelmien ratkaisemiseksi ehdotamme sosiaalisen metatiedon käsitettä, joka käyttää hyväksi kuvienjakojärjestelmien sosiaalista aktiivisuutta. Käyttäjäkeskeinen lähestyminen suunnittelussa nostaa esille myös, että sisältöä kuvaavan metatiedon luomista pitäisi lähestyä useasta eri näkökulmasta – sosiaalinen metatieto, käyttäjien "tägit" ja konteksti-informaatio – perinteisen sisältöpohjaisen analyysin lisäksi.reviewe

Truncated RAP-MUSIC (TRAP-MUSIC) for MEG and EEG source localization

Electrically active brain regions can be located applying MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) on magneto-or electroencephalographic (MEG; EEG) data. We introduce a new MUSIC method, called truncated recursively-applied-and-projected MUSIC (TRAP-MUSIC). It corrects a hidden deficiency of the conventional RAP-MUSIC algorithm, which prevents estimation of the true number of brain-signal sources accurately. The correction is done by applying a sequential dimension reduction to the signal-subspace projection. We show that TRAP-MUSIC significantly improves the performance of MUSIC-type localization; in particular, it successfully and robustly locates active brain regions and estimates their number. We compare TRAP-MUSIC and RAP-MUSIC in simulations with varying key parameters, e.g., signal-to-noise ratio, correlation between source time-courses, and initial estimate for the dimension of the signal space. In addition, we validate TRAP-MUSIC with measured MEG data. We suggest that with the proposed TRAP-MUSIC method, MUSIC-type localization could become more reliable and suitable for various online and offline MEG and EEG applications.Peer reviewe

TMS-EEG: From basic research to clinical applications

Proceeding volume: 1626Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) combined with electroencephalography (EEG) is a powerful technique for non-invasively studying cortical excitability and connectivity. The combination of TMS and EEG has widely been used to perform basic research and recently has gained importance in different clinical applications. In this paper, we will describe the physical and biological principles of TMS-EEG and different applications in basic research and clinical applications. We will present methods based on independent component analysis (ICA) for studying the TMS-evoked EEG responses. These methods have the capability to remove and suppress large artifacts, making it feasible, for instance, to study language areas with TMS-EEG. We will discuss the different applications and limitations of TMS and TMS-EEG in clinical applications. Potential applications of TMS are presented, for instance in neurosurgical planning, depression and other neurological disorders. Advantages and disadvantages of TMS-EEG and its variants such as repetitive TMS (rTMS) are discussed in comparison to other brain stimulation and neuroimaging techniques. Finally, challenges that researchers face when using this technique will be summarized.Peer reviewe

Admixed Portrait: Design to Understand Facebook Portrayals in New Parenthood

We report on a design-led study of the photographic representation of self and family on Facebook during and after becoming parents for the first time. Our experience-centered, research-through-design study engaged eight participants across five UK homes, in a month-long deployment of a prototype technology -- a design research artifact, Admixed Portrait, that served to prompt participant reflection on first-time parenthood. In addition to pre- and post-deployment interviews, participants kept diaries capturing personal reflections during the deployment, on daily social media use and interactions with Admixed. Our qualitative insights on social media representations of transitional experience and identity for new parents, reveal how their online 'photowork' related to self-expression and social functioning. We contribute design considerations for developing tools to support photographic expression in social media use, and methodological insights about design-led inquiry for understanding transitional experiences

Closed-loop optimization of transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalography feedback

Background: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is widely used in brain research and treatment of various brain dysfunctions. However, the optimal way to target stimulation and administer TMS therapies, for example, where and in which electric field direction the stimuli should be given, is yet to be determined. Objective: To develop an automated closed-loop system for adjusting TMS parameters (in this work, the stimulus orientation) online based on TMS-evoked brain activity measured with electroencephalography (EEG). Methods: We developed an automated closed-loop TMS-EEG set-up. In this set-up, the stimulus parameters are electronically adjusted with multi-locus TMS. As a proof of concept, we developed an algorithm that automatically optimizes the stimulation orientation based on single-trial EEG responses. We applied the algorithm to determine the electric field orientation that maximizes the amplitude of the TMS-EEG responses. The validation of the algorithm was performed with six healthy volunteers, repeating the search twenty times for each subject. Results: The validation demonstrated that the closed-loop control worked as desired despite the large variation in the single-trial EEG responses. We were often able to get close to the orientation that maximizes the EEG amplitude with only a few tens of pulses. Conclusion: Optimizing stimulation with EEG feedback in a closed-loop manner is feasible and enables effective coupling to brain activity. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.Peer reviewe