Legal and ethical implications of mobile live-streaming video apps

Abstract

The introduction of mobile apps such as Meerkat, Periscope, and Facebook Live has sparked enthusiasm for live-streaming video. This study explores the legal and ethical implications of mobile live-streaming video apps through a review of public-policy considerations and the computing literature as well as analyses of a mix of quantitative and qualitative user data. We identify lines of research inquiry for five policy challenges and two areas of the literature in which the impact of these apps is so far unaddressed. The detailed data gathered from these inquiries will significantly contribute to the design and development of tools, signals or affordances to address the concerns that our study identifies. We hope our work will help shape the fields of ubiquitous computing and collaborative and social computing, jurisprudence, public policy and applied ethics in the future.

Personal Privacy Protection via Irrelevant Faces Tracking and Pixelation in Video Live Streaming

“…where X 2 1 is the chi-square distribution with 1 degree of freedom according to Wilk's Theorem, and T ELR converges in this distribution. Otherwise, we will reject the null hypothesis H 0 when T ELR ≥ X 2 α , and X 2 α is the confidence interval:…”

“…The primary host of live streaming activities transformed from TV stations, news bureau, and professional agencies to the ordinaries. Without the imposed censorship, these private streaming channels severely disregard the personal privacy rights [2]. As a result, streamers, together with live streaming platforms, have raised a host of privacy infringement issues.…”

A Snapshot of Bystander Attitudes about Mobile Live-Streaming Video in Public Settings

“…Mobile and wearable devices have sparked debates involving individuals' right to privacy, to publicity, and (in the European Union) to be forgotten [11], as well as their owners' legal rights to film others in various settings, who may view these videos, and what is captured by the video. Understanding the privacy implications of video-streaming technologies is, however, still a challenge [12].…”

What Drives Streamers? Users’ Characteristics and Motivations on Social Live Streaming Services

“…Social live streaming services (SLSSs) such as Periscope 1 , Ustream 2 , YouNow 3 , Facebook Live 4 , niconico 5 (in Japan), QQ 6 , Panda 7 (both in China) or -for broadcasting e-sports resp. drawing -Twitch 8 and Picarto 9 (Table 1) are social media, which combine Live Streaming with elements of Social Networking Services (SNSs) including a backchannel from the viewer to the streamer and among the viewers.…”

“…These services see also use in live broadcasting sports events; however, there are massive legal problems [6]. Authors have discussed legal and ethical implications of SLSSs [7][8][9], while others focus on privacy [10]. If we differentiate between topic-specific SLSSs (as Twitch or Picarto) and general SLSSs (without any thematic limitation) [2], we are able to identify some scientific studies on specific SLSSs, especially Twitch [e.g., [11][12][13][14][15][16], and a few on general SLSSs, especially on Periscope, YouNow and Ustream [2,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”