If you’re wondering where the Red Wave 2019 championships video went, it’s been taken down due to violation of copyright. As a writer, I believe I should have the rights to upload and publish works that I’ve helped create, in this case the performance. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.
I had some email exchanges with someone from Flosports to get more insight on how this all works, and I’ll explain here. When an ensemble signs up for WGI, media rights (rights to publicity) are granted to WGI, which includes the right to stream, which is then passed on to Flosports. Despite owning the copyrights to the performance (audio and visual aspects), Flosports still retains the legal rights to the actual video itself, as they were the ones who recorded it. Flosports is also not obligated to pay out ensembles/writers despite making money by charging subscriptions for their streams because of the rights being given when an ensemble signs up. (The least they could do at least is have high quality streams in 1080p with decent audio - but hey… maybe the 4th year will be better?)
It makes complete sense from a straightforward legal standpoint. Is it fair? Not too sure about that. Flosports/WGI has the rights to share the creation of the ensembles/writers, however no one has rights to share the videos that were created.
It’s unfortunate that it’s how it works - I think it’s detrimental to the activity. How can fans of the activity be able to enjoy what they love, if no videos of performances can be made available? Copyright laws can be incredibly frustrating, and with online streaming platforms and video hosting sites, it only gets even more complicated. It’s disappointing that members of performing ensembles cannot freely share what they spent months working on, due to restrictions. Will anything change in the future? Probably not - with publishers and big music companies wanting money, it will be hard for these performances to be freely available. It just further justifies having to travel out to WGI Championships to watch these ensembles in person. It’s so much better than watching it on a screen anyway.
