May 11, 2007

Voice of Dance Launches Video Content

Popular dance website Voice of Dance launched a dance video contest that pays $1,000 to the winner. Dancers are encouraged to upload original videos to YouTube to participate in this contest, which runs through May. The winner will be announced July 2nd.

The voting results for each week's best video and the grand prize winner in July appear to be determined solely by the vote totals not by the creator of this contest. And during May, you can vote three times each week for the same or multiple videos.

Voice of Dance could have implemented a better registration system - once you sign-up, you only need your name and email address - there's no password, which means that you could log-on to the competition site, sign-in using my name and email address and vote on my behalf. Most voting systems can be messed with, but this one more than most.

One thing I don't understand. The rules say you should upload your video to YouTube in "private" mode. But then, you're supposed to tag your video "voiceofdance." How can Voice of Dance search for a tag if the video is marked private? Maybe I'm missing something.

In the rules for this contest, VOD is very clear that you must upload your own videos and you cannot infringe on the rights of others. So while VOD is covering itself from a legal perspective, I wonder what percentage of the videos in this contest will actually be "legal." In other words, if the video is of a dance performance, have all the dancers and other artists (costume, lighting, set design) signed agreements/waivers providing permission for their work to be featured in this video which is competing for a financial award? And do they have permission to use the music that is included in their video. These questions follow-up on the post I wrote earlier this week about intellectual property and ownership interests. My guess is that in many cases the people who upload their videos will not have received all of the proper authorizations and licensing to submit their videos to this contest.

While I think this video competition is a great idea and I'm sure we will see similar initiatives in the near future, this is one more reason why the dance community has to start getting serious about IP and other legal issues surrounding the sharing of dance videos online. The bottom line is that it will be very difficult for dancers and dance companies to take advantage of the emerging online revenue streams without addressing these sometimes complicated legal issues.

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