The Dayton Drama

[garfieldfan80]

RE: The original Dayton Drama

Well . . back in the '60's they would let me stroll into rock concerts covered with cameras - but not now. All such things are now licensed for a stiff fee. It's unfortunate but probably inevitable that WGI and most local circuits have eventually followed suit. I'm glad to be relieved of having to do photo chores at shows - I much prefer to just watch - but I'm a bit amused by the conflicts arising from these license agreements in the digital age. This "drama" sounds completely attributable to still photo and video licensees complaining to WGI about unlicensed still shots and video clips flooding internet and facebook sites and undercutting the sales of their licensed images. WGI relies heavily on selling video's of performances or viewing access to them for revenue and can't at all be pleased by seeing video's of regional performances showing up on YouTube (for free!) much quicker than for-pay WGI video's appear on FanNetwork. There were video's of individual group prelim performances at Dayton on internet sites by early Saturday night - not yours, of course, but produced and uploaded by proud parents unmolested by WGI officialdom - well, yet anyway.

This fuss sounds like someone highly aware and sensitive about WGI's declining video sales spotting you (or someone else that WGI staff mistook you for) in the audience and "alerting the authorities" - usually a cameraman or crew member, but given your particular equipment it might have been someone with a lot less technical knowledge. You were probably a somewhat conspicuous sitting target by taking photos of every unit and sitting through the whole show, which is quite a bit more exposed to the authorities than typical parents who only grab shots of one performance and often leave. And, given your clear unobstructed shots of the whole performance area, I suspect you were even more conspicuous sitting away from other spectators whose heads would get in the way. If you were taking notes after each performance on top of that, you might as well have had a target on your back.

I'm not making excuses for the weird behavior of meddlesome officials, just offering some plausible motives. I think that WGI is attempting the impossible - trying to maintain exclusive control of content distribution while still allowing "amateur" photography. Given the already impressive high-resolution still and video capabilities of even amateur-appearing cameras today and the almost universal behavior of parents and children posting the stuff on free internet sites, it's patently un-doable. If WGI banned all cameras (like almost all other entertainment venues) it would at least be a relatively clear and somewhat enforcible rule, and they might (slim chance) buttress their monopoly revenues for a short while (unlikely). It's possible that WGI might go to that, but ultimately I think they will only have a successful business plan by drastically chopping their prices and emulating Itunes - something like $1 for a HD guard performance video (download, not just viewing) or still photo. They would probably get a huge increase in sales volume and have a revenue stream that would GROW over time instead of shrinking.

In the meantime, other weird stuff is occurring in local circuits. Still-photo firms with exclusive licenses are complaining loudly about kids lifting proof-shot images from their websites and posting them on facebook, etc. Even if you buy legitimate prints at $7-10 a pop, you still have no right to post them anywhere because all duplication or publishing rights remain with the photographer or firm. Trying to enforce such things will ultimately be another fool's errand. The organizations and photo-firms effected do not have the political or legal clout of the huge multi-national recording industry and nobody is going to go after facebook, YouTube, etc. (who actually are large multi-national corporations) and their subscribers the way they went after low-budget music file-sharing sites and their users. The circuits and firms need to work out a different business plan, something that includes much lower prices and routing sales through the unit organizations with lots of profit incentives for them to encourage sales. Parents and kids usually want their units to make more money, but frequently have opposite feelings about their circuit and its concessionaires.

So . . . sorry you got hassled. I've been there many times and it always gets my blood boiling and ruins my day. Thanks for hanging in there and keeping up the reviews.

[garfieldfan80]

Professionally done videos like the WGI's network and now a new network one watch guard videos, are watchable. YouTube postings of videos are such awful quality I don't know how you can compare. Between those two sites I have seen everything I have interest in, and I also prefer the times when the cameraman shows closeups of the equipment work and uniforms like on the new site. I have paid for both sites and for all you can see I'm having a hard time understanding how people don't realize that for what they give you, it is probably less than 99 cents a guard.