The Legal Protection Of Sports Broadcasting In The Network Environment

With the rapid development of the Internet and the increasingly perfect combination of athletic sports and modern media technology, the sports industry has gradually formed scale. And along with the further internationalization and commercialization of the sports industry, added by the consistently developed modern media technology, the role of sports broadcasting in the sports industry has become increasingly important, thus leading to lawsuits. However, there has been widespread controversy on the legal attributes and rights allocation of sports broadcasting in the network environment, which is not regulated by specific provisions, as a consequence the relate right-holders even judges are hard to find relevant legal merit on the disputes of sports broadcasting. With the empirical analysis, comparative study and historical research methods, the thesis takes broadcasting of sports events in the network environment as research object, and systematically sorts the rights sources, essential attributes and rights system of sports broadcasting, which could have certain theoretical and practical significance to the establishment and improvement of the relevant laws on the sports broadcasting in China.In modern society, there exists longstanding development and use of sports broadcasting, especially developed countries, such as Britain and the United States, have in practice formed a set of effective laws, regulations and industry practices. In the first part, the thesis makes it clear the concept of sports broadcasting, and raises a question where the rights of sports broadcasting come from in the case the sports itself is not protected by Copyright Law. Faced with the question, combining theoretical research and law in foreign countries,the rights sources and legal attributes of sports broadcasting are then analyzed, thus specifying the law property of sports broadcasting. In the second part, the thesis summarizes and compares the domestic and foreign law on the relevant regulations, judicial decisions and academic point of views of sports broadcasting. At present, China has no specific provisions on sports broadcasting, leading to a weak legal protection for sports broadcasting. By analyzing cases on sports broadcasting in recent years, combined with analysis on relevant judgments and various views of scholars, the thesis studies theoretically on the challenge for sports broadcasting encountered in new media network, and puts forward own views on regulatory issues for sports broadcasting in the network environment. In the last part, learning from the extraterritorial legal system and provisions of relevant international conventions, the thesis raises legislative proposals on improving the rights sources of sports broadcasting and proposes amendments for the relevant provisions of the Copyright Law.