I attended the fall seminar of Tully Center for Free Speech in order to get extra points for one of the courses I'm taking. The seminar was really interesting and I was so glad of being introduced about the event by the professor.
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Part 1, When Rights Collide: Sports Coverage V.S. Branding
While Dr. David M. Rubin introduced that Chicago was the first one being voting out of 2016 Olympic bid competition and asked Bob Costas to share his opinion, a student announced in a loud voice:”Rio wins!”
That is exactly what we call “live broadcast” and “real-time transmission”! In today’s information world of user-centered Internet, with wide use of blogging, pod casting, video casting, etc, traditional sports journalism have encountered a huge challenge by everyone involved in the sports event. “Nobody has monopoly over audience anymore”.
However, the question is, who has the right to publish and transmit information about sports events? In current situation, the right has been divided into different parts and limits service providers to put appropriate items on their media. For example, Time Warner Cable owns the live broadcast right which means the company could televise the sports game, and ESPN owns the right to put video stream online.
A faculty of Newhouse, also a photojournalist, shared his story in Q & A session, he said that it was the first time that he was asked to sign in an agreement stating that he had no right to publish his photos taken during sports games in Carrier Dome. Previously, he was only asked to read the agreement.
What if an audience records the event using iPhone and puts it online in real time? Definitely, such activity violates ESPN’s ownership of the linear video right.
According to the speakers, this is far beyond the right of being an audience. The right given to the audiences only allows them to come in and watch the game. In many cases, they can take photos, record videos, but they can never post them on public domain, because that right goes to ESPN.
However, is it really possible to control such activities? Everyone could bring a cell phone with a camera or even with video function and shoot the sports game pitch by pitch, real time broadcasting. Do ESPN prosecute people for that?
Another question is, do such online information really violate Time Warner or ESPN’s right, or the information there actually introduce more potential audiences to the game and make them go to Time Warner or ESPN’s sports channels for more information? More statistics and observations maybe required to further conclusion.
Part II Internet Censorship and Surveillance
Being a Chinese student, I’m very interested in Internet censorship, because the government of China has placed strict censorship and we all have suffered from it. The search engine companies, like Google and Baidu(local search engine in China) are required to remove some of the search results. The speaker, Mr. Nart Villeneuve said that it was the company’s choice to decide which specific results to be removed under the government’s pressure.
Currently, many websites are blocked in China. In fact, I am OK if the government wants to block some sites which they see them may be threats for the country. However, things are getting absurd and ridiculous, they even block websites such as Facebook, Blogger, Technorati, and Picasaweb.
Some people believe that the blocking of foreign web services, such as Blogger and Picasaweb is a measurement to protect and promote local service providers.
Mr. Villeneuve also introduced that in China, many users’ chatting records of different instant messengers were being monitored and recorded base on “keyword filter”. (Detailed information: Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform.)
Another interesting thing I want to address here is sometimes, such activities can cause unexpected results. Actually, I read this viewpoint on Twitter. The thing is, since now Twitter is blocked in China, and it is not always easy for people in China to find a way out to “tweet”, the result is, tweets in Chinese environment are able to keep a high quality while avoiding to be flooded by meaningless chatters.
Another speaker, Steven M.Cohen talked about the Internet censorship and ISPs. While ISP is considered to be neutral, but it seems that ISP still has the responsibility for the community for keeping the harmful information away. For ISP, there are always two choices, blocking or prosecuting. However, the legislation is always far behind and is unable to respond quick enough. Therefore, law enforcement of collaboration on an international level is required.
Fri, Oct.2, Fall Seminars, The Tully Center for Free Speech
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