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Putting Live Sports Broadcast Under The Protection Of Copyright Law

Posted on:2017-08-14Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J Y YuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2346330485497948Subject:Intellectual property law
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Since 1948 when the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) make payments for the broadcast of London Olympic Games, the dispute relating to the protection of sports events has been continuing. With the creation of Internet and the innovation of communicative technologies, the effect of sports competitions broadcast have been significantly improved. Thus, sports industry become a popular emerging market. Nowadays, sports competition is not just a competitive game, but a kind of commercial activity with huge capital investment and high return. Live sports in developed countries have received the good protection, but the legal protection of live sports is uncertainty in China, which is not in clarity whether and how to protect live sports in aspects in both theory and practice. At the same time, the huge number of pirates encroached the benefit of the obligee. The problem of live sports should be solved as soon as possible. Therefore, this essay intends to deeply study whether the live sports should be protected by copyright law and how to protect it. Besides the introduction and the conclusion, this essay is divided into four sections, whose main contents are as follows:The first section puts forward the realistic dilemma in the protection of sports events by the copyright law. With relaxed administration for domestic sports events, a large amount of capital enter into sports industry, and the sports events broadcast becomes an important developing focus. But in stark contrast to the current law of our country, whether Copyright Law, Anti Unfair Competition Law or Sports Law do not provide adequate legal protection for broadcast programs of live sports competition. Subsequently, there is a wide divergence of sports events broadcast programs in judicial practice. The typical model case claims that live sports program does not constitute a work, but could be protected by Anti Unfair Competition Law. Some judgments keeping conservative opinion, however, believe that sports events can be regarded as live TV and video product, whilst the other judgments which are ameliorative assert that live sports constitute programming works and should be protected by Copyright Law. This issue has also led to a heated debate in academic circles, but without accordant viewpoint. This contributes to rampant broadcast pirates to an extent, which not only brings many practical problems in right-safeguarding to oblige, but also obstructs further development of the sports industry. Legal protection has become a major issue needing solved immediately in the commercialization of sports events broadcast.The second section deeply analyzes whether the sports events can obtain protection by copyright law. Firstly, the existing viewpoints will be reviewed and critical analyzed, including "the right of broadcasting organization", "video product", "don't make the work say", "the work says"". These arguments are unable to solve practical problems and realize internal self-consistency in the theory of copyright system, which even demonstrate problems un-neutrality. This essay thus puts forward that the copyright-ability of sports events broadcast programs should be considered from three perspectives, the system analysis, the requirements analysis and the case judgment. This essay argues that bringing live sports programs into copyright law protection in line with the original intention of the system design, basing on live sports programs are able to reflect the creator's choice and arrangement, with originality, which conforms to elements of the work. But judging whether a program of a sports event constitutes a work, it is necessary to evaluate the creative level of program itself. Then the nature and rights ownership of sports broadcast programs will be demonstrated. The types of works in the existing copyright law cannot cover live broadcasts of sports events, nevertheless audiovisual works is expected to provide appropriate protection. Ownership of the rights needs to be determined according to the specific business model.In the third section, this essay introduces the experience from extra territorial that sports events live program obtains the copyright law protection. On the basis of analyzing the experience of protecting sports broadcast program in the main sports power countries, the trend of protection will be extracted that sporting events live program could be a work to protect as a common practice. On the background of our country will set the tone for the sports industry as a new economic growth point, and strive to export sports products, the experience of copyright protection in Europe and the United States has strong reference.The fourth section explores the copyright infringement of sports events broadcast programs. The First step is analyzing the cognizance of copyright infringement liability for sports event live programs. This essay argues that the Copyright Law should be regarded as the basic law explicitly for protecting sports events live programs, meanwhile lists the common way of tort, demonstrates the liability identification and analyze the infringement nature of webcasts which are controversial. Then, two core issues of the copyright liability of existing sports events broadcast programs are under thorough discussion, videlicet the behavior preservation and damage compensation. Emphatically, how to solve the problem that the existing behavior preservation system cannot play a role in regulating the short time network piracy infringement, and how to calculate the damage loss are key points of this section.Overall, the legal issues of live sports is imminent. This status with uncertainty and pirates should be reduced, meanwhile the government should help the sports industry to seize the golden period of development. This essay attempts to find the legitimacy and the way of live sports protection in copyright law, which could be helpful to improve correlative laws and regulations.
Keywords/Search Tags:sports events, live sports, copyright-ability, copyright ownership, tort liability
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