Controversy
Some jugglers and the juggling community have claimed that portions of the book Contact Juggling and any juggling performances that contain elements similar to Michael Moschen's original "Light" performance are breaches of Moschen's intellectual property or copyright. In 1992, Michael Moschen threatened not to attend the International Jugglers' Association annual conference in Quebec, Canada, where he was to be a guest of honor, due to a favorable review of the book Contact Juggling in the Fall 1991 issue of the IJA's periodical, Juggler's World. In the end, Moschen did attend the festival.
The wide commercial success of the "Fushigi Magic Gravity Ball" in 2010 reignited the controversy within the contact juggling community. The television advertisement consisted of a montage of contact juggling performance, the amazed reactions of audience members suggesting the ball appeared to float by itself, and an announcer suggesting that the ball can be quickly mastered "in just minutes." Concerned about the public depiction of contact juggling being accomplished not by skill but by means of a special prop, contact jugglers quickly filled a Fushigi thread to 100 pages on contactjuggling.org. The Winter 2010 edition of the IJA's periodical Juggle features a 4-page article about "the Dynamic/Contact/Sphereplay/Fushigi Controversy" by Brad Weston, including an interview with John Cammarano (the president of Zoom TV, the direct marketing firm producing the Fushigi ball). The following issue featured a rebuttal by a professional contact juggler accusing Cammarano of exploiting contact juggling to sell a deceptively marketed product.
Read more about this topic: Contact Juggling
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