May 3, 2007

Are Your Online Videos "Legal"?

To follow-up my post "New International Dance Association Needed," in which I touch upon the topic of how to properly license music for your online videos, I want to address important intellectual property and contractual issues.

Over the next few years, dancers and dance companies can potentially generate millions of dollars as a result of new and expanded online distribution options for high-quality videos.

Yet, there are a number of legal issues that have to be dealt with now in order for dancers to benefit from these online opportunities.

1) Are you properly licensing the music that you incorporate in your online dance videos - whether you are distributing performance, instructional, documentary, rehearsal or other video genres?

2) If you are running into trouble licensing the music you want, are there other approaches such as royalty-free music you can pursue?

3) Do you have permission from dancers/instructors in your videos to distribute them on the Internet? Do you have written agreements? Do dancers get paid a specified amount or do they get a percentage of potential revenue?

4) Do you have similar agreements with lighting designers, set designers, and costume designers to feature their work in your videos? Since all of these artists have a potential claim to their creative output, any use of their work has to be explored upfront and should be in writing.

5) What limitations, if any, are there on videotaping dancers? This is an especially important question when there are union contracts between a dance company and dancers. Some of the contracts I've read make it just about impossible for videos of these dancers to be distributed in just about any format. So it seems that it is in the interest of dance companies and the unions that represent dancers to renegotiate the use of online video in their contracts.

These are just some of the intellectual property and contractual issues that come to mind. I believe the online economy - especially in the form of videos - can contribute in significant ways to helping dancers earn more money. But it will be very difficult to move forward unless the above and related questions are addressed in a comprehensive, industry-wide manner.

How-to Address These Topics

It seems that the best way to move forward on these IP and contractual issues is by holding some type of online forum where representatives of all the important players are brought together both to learn about the key issues as well as to figure out how to move forward in a way that benefits all parties.

Participants in such a program would include different types of dancers (union/non-union, professional, competitive, amateur and others), choreographers, dance company managers, unions representing dancers, musician representatives, music licensing groups, video hosting and distribution companies, IP and corporate lawyers and other groups that can shed light on these topics and offer direction.

If you have thoughts on above or how this type of initiative might be realized, please share your ideas.

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