Videos

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Bobby Hitt and Sheri Hall

Videos

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Chris Brackman, Joanne Stegawski, and Matt Bradshaw.

Videos

Open Stage Extras

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Bobby Hitt, Chris Brackman, Diana Warrendorf and Sheri Hall

Thanks to my involvement with the Open Stage project, I receive a fair amount of email from YouTube.

At first my “penpal” was somewhat aloof and stuck only to professional topics; notifying me about the odd channel subscription or comment on our ever-evolving online video archive.

Over time, our relationship has truly blossomed, and now YouTube speaks pretty openly about its feelings. In point of fact, we seem to be having a bit of a tiff at the moment.

The Open Stage production crew dutifully uploads a smattering of videos from our main stage performances each and every week. Many of those videos contain music, either in the form of a backing track or as the content of the performance itself.

Now, YouTube and I both love music. Trouble is, while we may both be in possession of copies of that music, neither of us actually owns the right to redistribute those wonderful songs with others.

This, in a nutshell, is the copyright conundrum. You can own a copy of a work without having permission to share that content. Or, as it applies to our case, you can have a track on your mp3 player without having the legal right to perform to it.

Whether this is a good thing or not isn’t really relevant. It’s the current state of the law, and both YouTube and I are doing our best to abide by that.

YouTube does its part by keeping an eye on copyright infringement as best it can and notifying us when we inadvertently run afoul of the legal boundaries of another entity’s work.

This can take one of a couple of different forms. First off, there’s the ongoing series of “love letters” I receive from YouTube each week. These detail who owns a given bit of copyrighted content and warn how we may have infringed upon their rights.

Fortunately, most copyright holders are happy to compromise. They throw a couple of ads on our videos and maybe even a link to buy their music. It sounds like a wonderful solution, but truth be told it’s still a black mark on our permanent record.

In some cases, the audio portion of the video is disabled. This usually comes with a nasty, “Oh no you didn’t!” notice automatically posted on the offending video’s page.*

*and several jokes about the amount of mime performed on Monday nights.

Entities that really want to control the uses of their work can petition to have videos removed, and in some extreme cases they can even have the offending user’s channel deleted in its entirety.

Needless to say, that would be a BAD THING we’d all like to avoid.

Since the general consensus is that YouTube and I make a spectacularly cute couple, I’d like to see us work out our copyright-related conflicts.

To make that happen, I need your help. The videos we upload each week as a part of the Open Stage project are based on your ideas, your performances and the content you choose to use to create them.

Take the time to educate yourself about copyright, both in general and as it pertains to YouTube. They’ve posted some terrific resources on their site to get you started.

Rather than looking at this as a huge list of obstacles to creating a music-backed performance, I like to think of this as a challenge to collaborate more with people who actually want their work shared with the world.

I’m personally a huge fan of the Creative Commons, both ideologically and as a resource for locating artists interested in allowing others to use the artists’ work in new creations.

Head over to the Creative Commons website for more information and search tools to help you find lots of music and other content that you’re not only free, but encouraged, to use.

I’m planning on creating a list of resources for less-encumbered music and making it available to all of our performing artists. If you have suggestions for that list, please let me know.

In addition to solving our copyright issues, choosing music that isn’t encumbered by copyright restrictions can be an amazing opportunity to showcase and promote independent artists.

And it’ll mean way more to YouTube than sending flowers.

Videos

Open Stage Extras

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Bobby Hitt, Joanne Stegawski, Matt Walker and Sheri Hall

Videos

Open Stage Extras

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Alicia Holston, Diana Warrendorf and Matt Bradshaw.

The Creative Motion Performing Arts Library is a community resource chock full of books, dvds and other media intended to help our members improve their skills.

Check the link in the sidebar for more information.

Videos

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Doyen Rainey, Joanne Stegawski, Matthew Vanacek and Sheri Hall

Videos

Open Stage Extras

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Matt Walker and Sheri Hall

Videos

Photos

This is only a small sampling of the amazing images captured at the Open Stage. Please see the photographer’s websites, linked below, for more.

photos by Eric Malmgren and Matt Bradshaw