Thread: Have you taken online bd classes? Please tell us what you think!

Originally Posted by aziyade

I'm there too :) But you do know that you can't get Suhaila's certification through the online classes, right? You have to do the live certification workshop. The classes are great for drilling the material that's on the test though. Enjoy!

yep, that's what I mean. I have a year to prepare

deleted double post

Originally Posted by kemintiri

yep, that's what I mean. I have a year to prepare

You'll be all set then!! Just remember to study the manual too. There's a written component to the test that's equally important.

will do, thanks!

I love all the detailed reviews and opinions shared in this thread. My limited attention span barely gets me through most threads but I made it to the end of this one (yay!). Bhuzzers can be so well-written sometimes.

Ansuya isn't my style and Suhaila definitely isn't but it's good to hear the pro's and con's of online classes. If I heard correctly, Hadia has got some online/downloadable/live class thing in the works too. Here's a link to the youtube video that is maybe meant to promote it: http://www.youtube.com/user/hadiadan.../1/6RZXixCEk2s
I don't know any more details but I'm super excited. Dancing with Hadia is revolutionary. Her approach is so unique and will do nothing but improve your dance in a natural and healthy way. She is a genius.

Thanks for the reviews! I have been thinking about online classes since having my baby. I just can't get out of the house like I used to.

Originally Posted by Hala Jamal

Ansuya isn't my style and Suhaila definitely isn't but it's good to hear the pro's and con's of online classes. If I heard correctly, Hadia has got some online/downloadable/live class thing in the works too. Here's a link to the youtube video that is maybe meant to promote it: http://www.youtube.com/user/hadiadan.../1/6RZXixCEk2s
I don't know any more details but I'm super excited. Dancing with Hadia is revolutionary. Her approach is so unique and will do nothing but improve your dance in a natural and healthy way. She is a genius.

Oh, thanks for the heads-up!

Originally Posted by Hala Jamal

Hadia has got some online/downloadable/live class thing in the works too. .

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love Hadia -- OMG! This is awesome!

I'll keep an eye out for Hadia's stuff but I looked all over her website and dind't find anything on it. Also the video in the link is to a new performance DVD.

Sorry about the link issue. Is this any better? http://www.youtube.com/user/hadiadan.../1/6RZXixCEk2s

It's not on her website. I don't think it's at the advertising stage yet. She's so busy traveling the world teaching and performing so it might be a while yet.

Glad to see fellow dancers appreciating her genius too. :-)

Ah yes, much better.
It does apear to be in the early stage, but I can totally chill with Ansuya classes until then, though I might stick with Ansuya. We shall see...
I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

Hadia writes:

"The website is in progress now and it will be a one DVD per month membership set up, which you can access anytime that you want. I will be putting out more details once we are ready to roll. Thanks so much for your interest...!! "


!!!!!!

Anasma's website shows her having online classes soon. !! I have no other information, but I love her dvds and am excited about getting new content from her!

Oooooh, I LOVE Anasma! I took two workshops with her in March and it really put everything in a new perspective for me. It would be so awesome if she started online classes!

Karen Barbee is doing online classes now. I LOVE her! I am putting this on my wishlist

Belly Dance Fun | Online Belly Dance Instruction


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Simply join our site for a monthly membership fee of $12.99, and receive unlimited access to beginning, intermediate and advanced belly dance instruction, right on your own computer. Membership to this site gives you access to beginner, intermediate, and advanced video classes and programs for all skills and ages. All videos are developed and designed by Karen Barbee.

Our teachers love what they do. Each one has completed Karavan teacher training, has years of personal and teaching practice, and have acquired additional specialized training and experience to further enhance their teaching expertise.!"

Hi Lylagus, is there any video samples you could post of these online classes?

Originally Posted by fairyqueen

Hi Lylagus, is there any video samples you could post of these online classes?

No kidding! There are no samples at ALL on the website and no list of what topics are covered, how long the videos are, no way to know what the quality of the video/sound is... basically just "hey give us your money, it's fun!" The teacher may be great, but the site's got to give us more information about the product before I'd consider buying.

Originally Posted by fairyqueen

Hi Lylagus, is there any video samples you could post of these online classes?

I haven't found any. I've been looking everywhere.

Originally Posted by tigerb

No kidding! There are no samples at ALL on the website and no list of what topics are covered, how long the videos are, no way to know what the quality of the video/sound is... basically just "hey give us your money, it's fun!" The teacher may be great, but the site's got to give us more information about the product before I'd consider buying.

I agree

Gypsynet is no longer functioning. Anusya is doing her own online classes on her website.

Found this thread as I am considering Suhaila online classes. As an attorney, I'd like to respond to the intellectual property debate that has surfaced.

First, when you buy a physical DVD, you have purchased an item and what you do with it is now covered under the "First Sale Doctrine." Copyright, as the name implies, is the right to make a copy. The copyright owner made a copy (the DVD) and sold it. How that copy is now disposed of is the right of the new owner. So, you can loan it out and resell it (Ripping it is an interesting side discussion--you do have the right to make personal copies to archive your items, which would presumably include making a copy of a DVD. However, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, circumventing IP protection is, in itself, a crime. So, under that, copying a protected DVD would be wrong. Jury's still out on this one). Public performance is another right encompassed by copyright. So, even though you own the DVD, you cannot perform it publicly, such as hosting a "come all" viewing at your home or charging rental fees to send it out.

When you buy an online class (and, if you read the fine-print on I-Tunes downloads, online music), you are not purchasing a physical copy. First sale doctrine does not apply. Instead, you are purchasing a license to use a copy. The license holder can impose any restrictions that she wishes on what you can now do with this, such as imposing a time limit on accessing it, restricting only one person to use each registered account (and thus not allowing you to "lend" your log-in), or restricting the number of times that you can burn a song to CD.

As to whether or not merely buying a license as opposed to a physical copy is "worth it" is entirely up to you. But there is nothing confusing, obscure, or shady about copyright holders in the digital age choosing to sell their items in the form of a license as opposed to a physical copy (well, unless they are trying to sell physical copies but claiming that its really just a license, like garment pattern copies try to get away with. But that's yet another digression). I am sure that the studios are doing cost/benefit business models to see how they can best distribute their products. I imagine that few of us would pay full price to buy "only" a video of a class, as opposed to a polished DVD. And then there are the production and shipping costs that would have to be added. For $45 to access 100 classes? I couldn't afford to buy that many DVDs.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

I think most people would agree it's more unethical to lend a DVD if you knew lending it would preclude that person's buying it, than if the person wanted to "test drive" it with a sincere intention to purchase it if it met their needs. Then again, some people don't find any of this morally wrong and think everything should always be free, no matter how much it effectively deprives its owner of reasonable compensation.

I have no idea where you got this idea. It's not wrong at all to lend someone a DVD, unless you're lending it to them with the knowledge that they will copy it and use it for ever without buying it. But you have bought the physical DVD, you own it, and while you lend it you can not use the content yourself. And when your friend gives it back to you, she will not be able to use it anymore.

It's also not wrong to lend someone a book to read, knowing that they will then not have to go buy a copy of it themselves if they want to read it. It's not wrong to lend someone a sweater when they're chilly when they might have had to go to Banana Republic and buy a sweater otherwise, even if they have no intention of "test driving" the sweater and buying it afterwards. It's not wrong to give clothes your baby grew out of to new parents, even though Gerber is thus being "deprived" of income they otherwise would have had.

As cascading_stars put it better later in the thread, from the legal point of view you own the object, though you do not own the copyright. But you can give, sell, or lend the object as you please. I mean, if I resell a WDNY DVD I bought, Neon will get no money whatsoever from the sale, and the person who bought it will not buy the DVD from her either. But I have done nothing ethically or legally wrong. This clarity is why I prefer to buy DVDs, real, hard DVDs, even if they cost more, and am not tempted by rentals or digital downloads at all. I want to own the object, I want to be able to sell it or lend it as I see fit, I want to take it abroad or play it on multiple devices at different times, I want to keep it for years. Same with books -- hence the lack of temptation from e-readers, in which you pay for a book you don't own and can't share.

Originally Posted by philoclea

I have no idea where you got this idea. It's not wrong at all to lend someone a DVD, unless you're lending it to them with the knowledge that they will copy it and use it for ever without buying it. But you have bought the physical DVD, you own it, and while you lend it you can not use the content yourself. And when your friend gives it back to you, she will not be able to use it anymore.

If the loaner period was long enough for the borrower to absorb the content, she does not necessarily unlearn that information when she returns the media. She doesn't un-watch performances. Of course, she can't refer back to the content after she returns it, but that doesn't mean benefit wasn't received without compensation being given. In some ways, this is the same gray area as going to a workshop and teaching the content you learned to someone who didn't attend. A lot of dancers don't care if you re-teach their workshop choreographies. Aziza doesn't need that piddling student choreography back. She can make up all the new ones she wants, so she can afford to tell you you're free to re-teach it...but the person who organized the workshop can't pay for the hall rental if only half of the attendance she needs to break even shows up, because the other half is going to learn after the fact for free or to the direct financial benefit of an attendee.

I mean, if I resell a WDNY DVD I bought, Neon will get no money whatsoever from the sale, and the person who bought it will not buy the DVD from her either. But I have done nothing ethically or legally wrong.

Legality is more clearly defined than ethics. If you bought one of Neon's DVDs and one-person-at-a-time loaned it to every dancer in the world so no one else had to buy it, that would be legal, since AFAIK there is no contractual limit on the number of loans you can make. I don't think many people would agree that it was the fair thing to do by Neon and Scott, though. We're a small community, and when someone circumvents a business transaction between another dancer and a source by sharing media, it's felt at a personal level. If WDNY budgets there are 5000 dancers interested in a title, their business model isn't set up for only 2500 people to buy it and 2500 to watch it out of the kindness of another dancer's heart, especially when that second group's "previewing" doesn't convert to an actual sale. It costs money to make and distribute media, personal expenses that people like Scott & Neon, Michelle Joyce, Beata & Horacio, et al. don't get reimbursed for when multiple students suckle on the same media teat for the cost of a single admission. It's not just about intellectual property rights. It's also about ethical treatment of the people who are paying out of their own pockets to create access to that intellectual property.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

If the loaner period was long enough for the borrower to absorb the content, she does not necessarily unlearn that information when she returns the media. She doesn't un-watch performances. Of course, she can't refer back to the content after she returns it, but that doesn't mean benefit wasn't received without compensation being given.

Nor can you unread a book you borrowed from someone else. But it doesn't make it wrong to borrow a book, whether it's a novel by Stephen King or a book of poetry by an obscure author. The idea that absolutely any consumption of media content beyond the single person who paid for it is wrong is a completely novel way of thinking about creative work. Of course, the concept of intellectual property is pretty new in the grander scheme of history too, but even copyright is about a creator's right to copy and sell a work, not about the right to limit anyone from seeing it unless they pay for the object brand new.

Let me ask you this: have you ever rented or bought a movie and watched it with a single other person? If yes, did that person write a cheque for the cost of the DVD or rental and send it to the maker? If not, how can you live with yourself? Your friend/partner/etc. cannot unsee the movie, and she or he would have had to rent their own darned copy to see Jaws if you hadn't invited them over.

If what you were arguing were true, then it would be wrong every time a family sat down to their movie night, because they *could* have all seen it in the theatre by buying multiple tickets, and are instead all watching it for the same price. Note that I'm not talking about large public viewings or charging admission -- but there's a concept of reasonable use that extends to more than one pair of eyes.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

In some ways, this is the same gray area as going to a workshop and teaching the content you learned to someone who didn't attend. A lot of dancers don't care if you re-teach their workshop choreographies.

Depends. If you're talking about a situation where the teacher gives students who paid for the workshop permission to perform a choreography they composed, and the choreo is then retaught and/or reperformed by other people who were not there, then the choreography as an artistic creation is indeed being used in a way the instructor did not intend. But there is a ton of content besides choreography in a workshop: a way of explaining an isolation or movement, ideas about dance and music, suggestions about how to compose choreos. These are not necessarily intellectual property -- in fact, the teacher probably learned many of them from her own teachers -- and I'm willing to bet that workshop attendees who also teach regularly take such "content" and use it to teach their own students.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

If you bought one of Neon's DVDs and one-person-at-a-time loaned it to every dancer in the world so no one else had to buy it, that would be legal, since AFAIK there is no contractual limit on the number of loans you can make.

Except that wouldn't happen. It's an absurd proposition.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

If WDNY budgets there are 5000 dancers interested in a title, their business model isn't set up for only 2500 people to buy it and 2500 to watch it out of the kindness of another dancer's heart, especially when that second group's "previewing" doesn't convert to an actual sale.

Again, an absurd proposition. The danger to their work and revenue comes from illegal copying and distribution, not from thousands of dancers lending their videos out. I haven't asked Neon or Michelle Joyce about this, but they are smart businesswomen and I'm willing to bet that they understand and estimate that a certain number of people will see their videos legally but without paying. My local public library has bellydance videos. Netflix has WDNY DVDs for rental (they probably get a tiny amount from that, but I'm sure not as much as selling the individual copies).

Many media companies estimate and build in that extra audience into their accounting. After all, magazine publishers calculate that each issue will be read by three or four people, and charge for advertising accordingly. I'm sure that companies that don't make their money off of advertising still have ways of calculating real audience vs buyers. It's piracy of content that blows that calculation apart, not lending of objects, which is always going to be limited in scope.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

It's also about ethical treatment of the people who are paying out of their own pockets to create access to that intellectual property.

I'm deeply grateful to the producers who make fabulous bellydance DVDs for me to learn from, but when they sell DVDs, they sell objects, not a "price of admission." I'm not in the habit of lending out my videos to friends, but even if I were, I wouldn't be responsible for making sure that each set of eyes that watches them pays full price for the privilege. Ethical treatment does not mean doing everything to make sure somebody else's profit is maximized, even if I do personally hope that all these dancers and producers earn a healthy income. Ethical treatment is not infringing on their right to charge for their work in the ways permitted to them.

Originally Posted by cascading_stars

However, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, circumventing IP protection is, in itself, a crime. So, under that, copying a protected DVD would be wrong. Jury's still out on this one).

"Jailbreaking" any device could arguably be a crime. Should it? I think the interwebz have spoken on this issue. The Internet community does not support DRM in darn near any manifestation we've seen so far.

But anyway...

As to whether or not merely buying a license as opposed to a physical copy is "worth it" is entirely up to you.

That's what we were discussing. I have since mellowed on my view, but I know others who will still not support the "rental" model.

But there is nothing confusing, obscure, or shady about copyright holders in the digital age choosing to sell their items in the form of a license as opposed to a physical copy

I don't think anyone was saying it was "shady" -- just that it was a new thing, and therefore resisted by many. ;) And as was pointed out, selling limited access to an online class is really not that different from the workshop experience.

But as Tourbeau mentioned, a certain kind of "information hoarding" isn't really valuable to the student. So if I have 1000 dvds, do I have time to actually watch and work with each one? Does that then devalue the overall usefulness of that collection to me?

I think that depends entirely upon the user and the content. For Suhaila's choreographies (especially the testing ones) I personally want more than 30 days for my $25. I want a physical copy. For the individual classes? Nah. I can do them once or twice before moving on to another. Plus it doesn't look like she's taken any OFF the site since 2009 anyway.

For $45 to access 100 classes? I couldn't afford to buy that many DVDs.

True -- and this is where Suhaila's product has a great deal of value, imo. There aren't that many newer classes being added as when she first started, but she hasn't removed any of the others either. So even though we only get one new Jamila class a month now, we have 3 years worth available.

Originally Posted by philoclea

It's piracy of content that blows that calculation apart, not lending of objects, which is always going to be limited in scope.

In the digital era, this is a false dichotomy.

Lending = Piracy
in entirely too many situations. It's entirely too easy to copy a digital loan.

For everyone reading this thread, how many times has someone given you a CD to listen to that you "accidentally" ripped into your iTunes media library? Or did you make a copy of the CD so you could listen to it later? I dare say we've all done it. We choose not to do it a lot because we support the idea of independent artists producing beautiful music. But it's hella easy to "borrow" the content from a lender, and end up keeping a copy for yourself. This is how lending becomes piracy -- especially when later I "lend" my "copy" to a friend who does the same thing.

I've been in classes where LITERALLY any time a student bought a DVD, the entire class borrowed it, and hush-hush made their own copies. One CD purchase ended up in the music libraries of 25 people.

"Let's pitch in together and buy that set of Dina DVDs from Little Egypt?" Sound familiar? How many hundreds of people just nodded.

Bellydance DVDs and CDs aren't being "pirated" in the way that "Song of the South" is being pirated -- where illegal copies are made and sold at your local flea market. But it's easy to see how every DVD that is uploaded to a torrent site or passed around (ie copied) among friends DOES actually cost the producer (and ultimately the consumer) in lost sales.

In 1995 when a friend loaned you a book, you didn't think to go out and xerox every page so you could return the book to your friend but still read it at your leisure. But now how many people wouldn't think twice before copying/ripping/downloading the current vampire ebook or the latest Cheeky Girls dvd, or Saad CD?

Originally Posted by aziyade

But as Tourbeau mentioned, a certain kind of "information hoarding" isn't really valuable to the student. So if I have 1000 dvds, do I have time to actually watch and work with each one? Does that then devalue the overall usefulness of that collection to me?

I'm kind of in that situation myself... I have a ton of DVDs (probably, with yoga and other kinds of dance and pilates and prenatal stuff, upwards of 300). I kind of shudder to think how much money I've spent on it. Yes, when they sit there unused, the info is not useful to me. Then again, they're kind of like books to me -- I might buy a book one day and not read it for seven years, but then fall in love with it and be delighted that I kept it all this time. (And yes, I have a book problem too -- thousands of them, that I've had to move multiple times.) Right now I'm in a moment in my life when I have more time flexibility than I've had in years, and the ability to spend more time with dance and yoga videos... I'm working with some new ones, but also picking up some that I've had for ages and rediscovering them.

I think that's why the rental or subscription models don't really appeal to me. I wouldn't use the videos steadily enough to make the money worthwhile, and there are actually very few of my videos I feel I'm "done" with after one use. I'm sure many dancers take a look at Shamira's videos and think they're one-off kinds of videos, but even though they're super basic, I still enjoy returning to them when I'm having a lazy day or I want to be inspired by her hands or whatever. So I love my "information hoard," even when I'm not actively using it!

Originally Posted by aziyade

Bellydance DVDs and CDs aren't being "pirated" in the way that "Song of the South" is being pirated -- where illegal copies are made and sold at your local flea market. But it's easy to see how every DVD that is uploaded to a torrent site or passed around (ie copied) among friends DOES actually cost the producer (and ultimately the consumer) in lost sales.

Aziyade, your entire post makes some very good points about lending leading to piracy, but I still don't think that means lending = piracy. I've never really been part of a local, geographic bellydance community, so I've never seen the "let's go in on this and make copies for all" practice -- and yes, I think in that situation, it's very easy to argue that sales were lost because you're looking at a bunch of intense bd students/aficionados who probably would otherwise buy the videos. But I was really turned off by Tourbeau's insistence that anytime anyone watches a video without paying a producer they're engaging in theft. By that token, it was wrong of me to buy so many of my bd VHS videos used, because the producers got nothing, and it's wrong of me to resell them, because the producers will get nothing.. but I think that's crazy talk.

Now, if I bought bd DVDs, ripped them, and then resold them, yes, that would be wrong. But I still think I'm within my ethical and legal rights to lend a DVD to a friend or to resell it, if that's my only copy. Otherwise everyone who resells their used videos on Bhuz or on the bellydancevideos group would be doing something deeply unethical!