Athletes Don’t Own Their Tattoos

運動員身上刺青不是自己的

When LeBron James bounds down a basketball court, he is both a transcendent athlete and a prominent palette for dozens of tattoos. His mother’s name, Gloria, rests on a crown on his right shoulder and his forearms bear a portrait of his son LeBron Jr. and 330, an area code for his hometown, Akron, Ohio.

當球星詹姆斯（詹皇）奔騰於球場時，他既是個超群的運動員，也是塊吸睛的刺青展示板。他母親的名字葛洛莉亞出現在他右肩的皇冠刺青上，而他左右前臂上則刺有兒子詹姆斯二世的肖像，以及330——他的家鄉俄亥俄州阿克隆市的區碼。

Although those tattoos have personal connections, they may not truly be his.

雖說這些刺青全和他個人有關，卻不一定真為他所有。

Any creative illustration “fixed in a tangible medium” is eligible for copyright, and, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, that includes the ink displayed on someone’s skin. What many people don’t realize, legal experts said, is that the copyright is inherently owned by the tattoo artist, not the person with the tattoos.

任何「固著於有形實體上的」創作圖文，都可享有著作權。根據美國著作權局的說法，這包括展示於某人身上的刺青。法律專家說，許多人不知道的是，刺青的著作權當然屬於施作刺青的藝師，而非被刺青者。

For most people, that is not a cause for concern. Lawyers generally agree that an implied license allows people to freely display their tattoos in public, including on television broadcasts or magazine covers. But when tattoos are digitally re-created on avatars in sports video games, copyright infringement can become an issue.

絕大部分的人不須擔心這一點。律師們基本上都同意，刺青藝師默許人們在公共場合自由展示身上的刺青，包括在電視播放中和雜誌封面上。但當這些刺青經數位重造出現在電玩遊戲中的運動員替身上時，就可能有侵權問題。

“Video games are an entirely new area,” said Michael A. Kahn, a copyright lawyer who represented the designer of the face tattoo on boxer Mike Tyson. “There is LeBron James, but it’s not LeBron James. It’s a cartoon version of him.”

「電玩是個全新的領域。」版權律師康恩說，「這既是詹姆斯，又不是詹姆斯。這是卡通版本的他。」康恩是拳王泰森臉上刺青設計者的代理人。

Electronic Arts, a game developer and publisher, re-creates more than 100 tattoos in its FIFA and UFC games, including the colorful sleeve on the right arm of soccer star Lionel Messi and a heart-eating gorilla on the chest of fighter Conor McGregor. Yet only a handful of players in its Madden football games are depicted with their real-life ink.

美商藝電是電玩的開發兼發行業者，在旗下的國際足盟大賽系列和綜合格鬥技系列遊戲裡，重現了超過一百個刺青，包括球星梅西的全幅右臂刺青，和格鬥選手麥葛瑞格胸膛上那叼著紅心的猩猩刺青。但僅有少數選手的刺青，被原樣重現在勁爆美式足球的系列遊戲裡。

Spokesmen for Electronic Arts did not respond to requests for comment. The company faced a copyright infringement lawsuit after the cover of the game NFL Street included an illustration of running back Ricky Williams and some of his tattoos, but the artist withdrew his claim in 2013.

對於媒體的詢問，美商藝電的發言人並未回應。這間公司曾吃上侵權官司，因為在電玩街頭橄欖球的封面上秀出了美式足球跑衛瑞奇威廉斯的身影，以及他的一些刺青，不過刺青師已在二○一三年撤告。

Players’ unions, many of which license the players’ likenesses to video game publishers, and sports agents have advised athletes to secure licensing agreements before they get tattooed. Artists have an incentive to sign rather than pass up a client who could be a billboard for their work.

許多運動員工會裡會將運動員的肖像樣貌授權給電玩發行商，運動員的工會與經紀人建議選手們，在刺青前先和刺青師簽下授權合約。刺青師通常都會願意簽，免得丟失了日後可能成為自己作品活廣告的客戶。

Gotti Flores said he has spent at least 40 hours tattooing NFL receiver Mike Evans, one of the few players with tattoos in Madden. He was surprised, he said, that he had to give permission for his work to be reproduced in the game.

刺青師佛羅雷斯說，他已經花了四十多個小時替美式足球外接員伊凡斯刺青。伊凡斯是極少數在電玩勁爆美式足球系列裡身上有刺青的球員之一。對於自己的作品在遊戲裡出現還得經過自己同意，佛羅雷斯頗感意外。

“Really, it didn’t even matter to me,” said Flores, who signed a waiver for no compensation. “It was dope to have my tattoos on there.”

「說真的，我不在乎。」佛羅雷斯無償簽下了授權證書，並說道：「可以在電玩裡看到我的刺青酷爆了！」

Useless Knowledge Begets New Horizons

無用的知識 造就新視野

In October 1939, as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were plunging the world into war, an American educational reformer named Abraham Flexner published an essay in Harper's Magazine under the marvelous title, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.”

1939年10月，當希特勒、墨索里尼和史達林讓全世界陷入戰爭時，一位名叫亞伯拉罕．弗萊斯納的美國教育改革家，在哈潑雜誌發表一篇論述文章，絕妙的標題為「無用知識的用處」。

Noting the way in which the concerns of modern education increasingly turned toward worldly problems and practical vocations, Flexner made a plea for “the cultivation of curiosity” for its own sake.

弗萊斯納指出，現代教育日益將注意力轉向世俗問題和實用職業，他呼籲應著力於「培養好奇心」，而且是基於這件事本身的價值。

“Now I sometimes wonder,” he wrote, “whether there would be sufficient opportunity for a full life if the world were emptied of some of the useless things that give it spiritual significance; in other words, whether our conception of what is useful may not have become too narrow to be adequate to the roaming and capricious possibilities of the human spirit.”

他寫道：「現在我不時會這麼問，假如這世界將一些賦予它精神意義的無用事物去除，要過個充實的人生是否還有足夠機會。換言之，我們對於有用與否的概念，是否尚未狹隘到不足以讓人類心靈自由馳騁的地步。」

I thought of Flexner’s essay while following the New Horizons flyby of minor planet 2014 MU69, better known as Ultima Thule.

我在關注新視野號飛越小行星2014MU69（更常見的名字是「終極遠境」）的消息時，想到弗萊斯納的這篇文章。

This comes right on the heels of NASA’s Osiris-Rex probe entering into orbit around the asteroid Bennu, barely a month after the InSight lander touched down on Mars, and not six months since the Parker Solar Probe began its trip toward the sun.

這個消息傳來的時間，緊接在美國太空總署的歐西里斯號探測器進入環繞小行星101955「貝努」軌道之後，距洞察號探測器在火星著陸不到一個月，距帕克號太陽探測器開始朝太陽飛行也不到六個月。

You don’t have to be a space geek to appreciate the awe and wonder involved in these missions: New Horizons’ stunning close-ups of Pluto and its moons; the breathtaking ambition of Osiris-Rex to collect rocks and dust from Bennu’s surface and return them to earth.

即使你不是太空控，也會讚賞這些任務令人敬畏與驚異之處：新視野號傳回冥王星及其衛星令人驚艷的近距離照片，以及歐西里斯號自貝努表面蒐集岩石和塵土、並送回地球那教人屏息的雄心壯志。

The marriage of disinterested science and technological wizardry on the farthest-flung adventures of the human race is what John Adams had in mind when he wrote that he had to “study Politicks and War that my sons may have the liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.” It is among the greatest fulfillments of the American dream.

在人類衝向極遠之境的這些冒險中，客觀的科學和科技魔法的結合，正是美國開國元勛約翰．亞當斯當年心中所想的，他寫道，他必須「研究政治和戰爭，如此我的兒子才可能有研究數學和哲學的自由。」這正是美國夢最棒的實現方式之一。

It is not, however, among the most commonly understood ones. Typically, we think of the American dream in materialistic terms — a well-paid job; a half-acre lot; children with better opportunities than our own. Or we think of it in political terms, as an ever-expanding domain of ever-greater freedom and equality.

然而，這並非最廣為人們理解的方式之一。通常我們都從物質面來看美國夢：一份薪水高的工作，一塊半英畝大的地，孩子比起我們有更好的機會。或者我們會想到政治面，像是不斷擴大的領域，裡面有越來越多的自由和平等。

But prosperity, freedom, equality for what? The deep critique of the liberal society is that it refuses on principle to supply an answer: Each of us lives in pursuit of a notion of happiness that is utterly subjective, generally acquisitive and almost inevitably out of reach — what psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill.”

然而，繁榮、自由和平等是為了什麼？自由社會深受批判之處，在於它拒絕按照原則提供一個答案：我們每個人活著都在追求一種快樂的概念，而那卻是全然主觀、大體而言貪得無厭，而且幾乎必然得不到的－心理學家稱之為「享樂跑步機」。

Religious cults and authoritarian systems work differently: Purposes are given, answers supplied, questions discouraged or forbidden, and the burdens of individual choice and moral agency largely lifted. They are dictatorships of meaning.

宗教狂熱和威權體制以不同的方式運作：目的被給予，答案被提供，提問不被鼓勵或被禁止，而個人抉擇和道德責任的負擔大多被移除。這就是在意義這件事上的獨裁。