A Very candid interview with Dan Acheson

[BRASSO]

Given the difficult position DCI finds itself in regarding sync rights, Acheson did the best he could to put good face on a bad situation. He handled that topic's question from Rondo about as well as could be expected, imo

[perc2100]

They were before designers started picking songs and samples with no regard to licensing costs.

More importantly, the A/V media are often the "gateway drug" for introducing drum corps to new fans and future participants. Good design could grow the activity. Design that gets edited off the video, not so much.

This could be true, but at best this is likely anecdotal: unless there are actual sales of media + financial incentives involved, this is little more than anecdotal

[Jeff Ream]

Spoken like a judge but, of course, you're right to a degree (a small one, IMO). But I can't square your general claim when A) there are so few corps in competition, and B) the finals placements have been relatively unchanging for decades.

Even during the ABBD years when show design was Tilting ($1 to me) towards incomprehensible and finals placements seemed to elicit as many as it did golf claps, media sales were driven by entertainment, not competition.

Where you are wrong, of course, is that you can't pay for rights or anything else unless fans buy your records and tapes.

I've said it before and IMO it's increasingly true that the activity will survive on entertainment without competition, but it won't survive on competition alone.

But, hey, I don't know where the Dow Jones will finish today, either.

fact: DCi has never made oodles of cash on dvds. add on to that fact: corps placing 13 down made a very smaller piece of that pie. I know that buttresses the G7's argument, but it is true.

Dan talks about all the kids trying out for the corps, but he makes it sound like they're all full. They aren't. Few are 100% full. A majority of those trying out have their dream corps, try there, and if they don't make it, they go home. it's been that way for decades, even with static placement.

i'd wager DCI is making far more money on live streaming that dvd and cd sales.

I can't predict what Episode VII will make beyond my $9 this morning and my $18 when I take the wife Sunday. But I will tell you there are serious merchandising lessons to be learned from it

Edited December 18, 2015 by Jeff Ream

[Jeff Ream]

They were before designers started picking songs and samples with no regard to licensing costs.

More importantly, the A/V media are often the "gateway drug" for introducing drum corps to new fans and future participants. Good design could grow the activity. Design that gets edited off the video, not so much.

no they weren't getting rich off of sales of Av merchandise. If they sold more units, the cost to make them would actually go down.

[Jeff Ream]

Given the difficult position DCI finds itself in regarding sync rights, Acheson did the best he could to put good face on a bad situation. He handled that topic's question from Rondo about as well as could be expected, imo

i agree. I do think however the lawyers gagged him for too long

[drangin]

I can't predict what Episode VII will make beyond my $9 this morning and my $18 when I take the wife Sunday. But I will tell you there are serious merchandising lessons to be learned from it

If the lessons are 1) product placement and 2) marketing as the main driver for show design, school's out for this truant.

[Jeff Ream]

If the lessons are 1) product placement and 2) marketing as the main driver for show design, school's out for this truant.

no and no.

[Pete Freedman]

Maybe it was deliberate.

Maybe the DCI BOD instructed DCI corporate to stream the archive without paying for it.

That is, maybe DCI deliberately failed to pay for streaming sync rights for 40+ years worth of shows, while planning the whole time to claim they thought they were covered by physical media sync contracts in the event they got caught.

But such contracts generally specify the use, as in the particular medium (DVD, etc), number of copies, etc. And while it all may be very complicated, I've never heard on here or read anywhere that a sync rights contract specifying a particular physical medium could be construed as covering unlimited internet streaming. Particularly one negotiated in 1984 for example. Perhaps on some contracts the wording is vague enough to potentially stretch enough to cover streaming, but everyone says these contracts are very specific.

If I'm wrong about that, then this theory is wrong or at least shaky.

Otherwise, this interview reinforces this idea that I've been suspecting for awhile now..

Exhibit A: DCI has paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars ... ".

First of all, that's not so much really. $100,000 is around 1% of DCI's budget. That's for a single year. Obviously hundreds of thousands would be a big chunk to pay in a single year, but spread out over 40+ years it's entirely reasonable. The additional for streaming might also be reasonable, but would have been a big chunk when they started the Fan Network. Mr. Acheson didn't say, nor has anyone said, that they paid a big chunk of money when they started the Fan Network. Maybe they didn't.

Paying sync rights for streaming might have been a nightmare, in that DCI might have had to keep track of views for each show and keep paying over time. So not only more money, but more complicated money. I don't know how that works. Maybe different copyright holders would have demanded different accounting methods, making it even more complicated. Maybe the BOD said in effect, "No way, just do it."

Exhibit B: No mea culpa. Mr. Acheson did not take personal responsibility, but he did say it was DCI's fault in general (without getting specific). It follows that - bear with me - if it was DCI's fault, but not his own fault, then it must have been the BOD's fault, because that's the only part of DCI that he doesn't run. That may be reading into it a bit, but it looks to me like he (Acheson) may have been complaining about this to the BOD for years. They, in turn, may have responded with a directive to charge people $70 a pop, give the money to them, stiff the copyright holders, and leave show names and repertoires off the Fan Network (It was the only media product DCI didn't put this info on. Funny that, isn't it?)

I wonder if non-profit BOD members are personally liable for their actions (i.e. their votes). If they are not (especially in such a 'minor' issue as a copyright violation) then certainly their corps are immune from liability. They may simply not care if DCI gets jacked up legally. They can just start another league, as some want to do anyway.

This is all hypothesis. Maybe DCI went back and paid for all those years of sync rights before opening FN. But we should consider the possibility that this is the result of another example of nasty internal DCI politics.

[tesmusic]

Maybe it was deliberate.

Maybe the DCI BOD instructed DCI corporate to stream the archive without paying for it.

That is, maybe DCI deliberately failed to pay for streaming sync rights for 40+ years worth of shows, while planning the whole time to claim they thought they were covered by physical media sync contracts in the event they got caught.

But such contracts generally specify the use, as in the particular medium (DVD, etc), number of copies, etc. And while it all may be very complicated, I've never heard on here or read anywhere that a sync rights contract specifying a particular physical medium could be construed as covering unlimited internet streaming. Particularly one negotiated in 1984 for example. Perhaps on some contracts the wording is vague enough to potentially stretch enough to cover streaming, but everyone says these contracts are very specific.

If I'm wrong about that, then this theory is wrong or at least shaky.

Otherwise, this interview reinforces this idea that I've been suspecting for awhile now..

Exhibit A: DCI has paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars ... ".

First of all, that's not so much really. $100,000 is around 1% of DCI's budget. That's for a single year. Obviously hundreds of thousands would be a big chunk to pay in a single year, but spread out over 40+ years it's entirely reasonable. The additional for streaming might also be reasonable, but would have been a big chunk when they started the Fan Network. Mr. Acheson didn't say, nor has anyone said, that they paid a big chunk of money when they started the Fan Network. Maybe they didn't.

Paying sync rights for streaming might have been a nightmare, in that DCI might have had to keep track of views for each show and keep paying over time. So not only more money, but more complicated money. I don't know how that works. Maybe different copyright holders would have demanded different accounting methods, making it even more complicated. Maybe the BOD said in effect, "No way, just do it."

Exhibit B: No mea culpa. Mr. Acheson did not take personal responsibility, but he did say it was DCI's fault in general (without getting specific). It follows that - bear with me - if it was DCI's fault, but not his own fault, then it must have been the BOD's fault, because that's the only part of DCI that he doesn't run. That may be reading into it a bit, but it looks to me like he (Acheson) may have been complaining about this to the BOD for years. They, in turn, may have responded with a directive to charge people $70 a pop, give the money to them, stiff the copyright holders, and leave show names and repertoires off the Fan Network (It was the only media product DCI didn't put this info on. Funny that, isn't it?)

I wonder if non-profit BOD members are personally liable for their actions (i.e. their votes). If they are not (especially in such a 'minor' issue as a copyright violation) then certainly their corps are immune from liability. They may simply not care if DCI gets jacked up legally. They can just start another league, as some want to do anyway.

This is all hypothesis. Maybe DCI went back and paid for all those years of sync rights before opening FN. But we should consider the possibility that this is the result of another example of nasty internal DCI politics.

Wow-this is just a whole bunch of craziness.

Not only are the theories on money and how things were/are done completely bizarre, they're riddled with a complete lack of knowledge on the subject as it pertains to not only DCI, but copyright as a whole.

Please send me your address and I would be more than happy to share books, depositions, court documents, etc. on the subject.

Wow...

[mingusmonk]

Maybe it was deliberate.

Maybe the DCI BOD instructed DCI corporate to stream the archive without paying for it.

That is, maybe DCI deliberately failed to pay for streaming sync rights for 40+ years worth of shows, while planning the whole time to claim they thought they were covered by physical media sync contracts in the event they got caught.

But such contracts generally specify the use, as in the particular medium (DVD, etc), number of copies, etc. And while it all may be very complicated, I've never heard on here or read anywhere that a sync rights contract specifying a particular physical medium could be construed as covering unlimited internet streaming. Particularly one negotiated in 1984 for example. Perhaps on some contracts the wording is vague enough to potentially stretch enough to cover streaming, but everyone says these contracts are very specific.

If I'm wrong about that, then this theory is wrong or at least shaky.

Otherwise, this interview reinforces this idea that I've been suspecting for awhile now..

Exhibit A: DCI has paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars ... ".

First of all, that's not so much really. $100,000 is around 1% of DCI's budget. That's for a single year. Obviously hundreds of thousands would be a big chunk to pay in a single year, but spread out over 40+ years it's entirely reasonable. The additional for streaming might also be reasonable, but would have been a big chunk when they started the Fan Network. Mr. Acheson didn't say, nor has anyone said, that they paid a big chunk of money when they started the Fan Network. Maybe they didn't.

Paying sync rights for streaming might have been a nightmare, in that DCI might have had to keep track of views for each show and keep paying over time. So not only more money, but more complicated money. I don't know how that works. Maybe different copyright holders would have demanded different accounting methods, making it even more complicated. Maybe the BOD said in effect, "No way, just do it."

Exhibit B: No mea culpa. Mr. Acheson did not take personal responsibility, but he did say it was DCI's fault in general (without getting specific). It follows that - bear with me - if it was DCI's fault, but not his own fault, then it must have been the BOD's fault, because that's the only part of DCI that he doesn't run. That may be reading into it a bit, but it looks to me like he (Acheson) may have been complaining about this to the BOD for years. They, in turn, may have responded with a directive to charge people $70 a pop, give the money to them, stiff the copyright holders, and leave show names and repertoires off the Fan Network (It was the only media product DCI didn't put this info on. Funny that, isn't it?)

I wonder if non-profit BOD members are personally liable for their actions (i.e. their votes). If they are not (especially in such a 'minor' issue as a copyright violation) then certainly their corps are immune from liability. They may simply not care if DCI gets jacked up legally. They can just start another league, as some want to do anyway.

This is all hypothesis. Maybe DCI went back and paid for all those years of sync rights before opening FN. But we should consider the possibility that this is the result of another example of nasty internal DCI politics.