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Originally Posted by ViewtifulMisho I think any sane individual can agree that this is a really unhealthy attitude for a sport that is in dire need of growth.
Hell, we should be out on the corner with DVDs and YouTube links to fencing bouts pelting pedestrians as they walk by. |
Well, you have to balance the sport's need for growth with the sport's need for growth in coverage. You see, until recently, video coverage of fencing has been almost nonexistent. Usually, it would amount to videos of the finals of each event, and *occasionally* the semifinals or the fence-off for third. These videos would usually be low-resolution, badly framed (the cameraman was bad at capturing the action and zooming correctly), the lighting and exposure was terrible, and stuff generally sucked.
Now, fencingpictures has stepped in and upped the quality of fencing video, delivering recently the entire round of 32 up, and has plans in the very near future to introduce HD. HD is particularly important because the other thing that's sucked about all previous fencing footage is that in most shots, you couldn't really see the blade. You had to infer its position and orientation from the occasional frame where it caught a light and from the arm motions. This is mainly a failure of resolution. With HD, though I have not seen any fencing HD footage, it seems highly likely that this problem will go away, and we will be able to see the blades. This is essential for the spread of fencing, because otherwise to the average person it's completely invisible! They haven't been watching fencing for years, so they don't know how to infer where the blade is, so they're just clueless.
I assume this is a pretty big investment for them, and they're betting that sales will increase significantly because of it. Personally, I plan on buying their men's foil videos where I hadn't usually before because of the increased coverage. Most people I've talked to have said that would be worth it, where just the finals and semifinals wouldn't. So, at least as far as the next few years goes, the increase in coverage of fencing and its increased visibility from HD is probably largely dependent on whether fencingpictures wins its gamble.
This is much different from the usual situation with copyright infringement, where record companies put the screws to artists, make billions, and then turn around and sue their customers; in this case, fencingpictures is a small operation of a handful of guys who care about fencing and want to spread it. Thus, I buy their stuff, even though I often pirate music and movies.
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