Watch out!
There is not much surf news this morning,
nothing that really compliments your morning coffee. The Vans World
Cup of Surfing at Sunset Beach, North Shore, Oahu was called off
yesterday because the waves became too big. I suppose that’s
something and has the World Surf League lost its nerve? That is two
events called off due to an abundance of size in under two weeks.
Has the World Surf League lost its sense of grand adventure?
I’ll tell you one thing the World Surf League has not lost. Its
sense of irony for it was revealed today that the League is
“really, really protective of its intellectual property…” and let’s
dig right in to this juicy little contradiction.
The quote comes from a new story about an incident that happened
last year during the Jaws event. You certainly read it elsewhere
then but, as a refresher…
An “unauthorized drone” was buzzing around the Jaws, maybe
snagging some video etc. The League had its lifeguards try to throw
swim fins at it before knocking it out of the sky with a proper
helicopter. Doesn’t that seem a little on the dangerous side? Like,
what if the the thing got stuck in the helicopter’s intake and made
it crash at Jaws, taking out Albee Layer?
I would have made sure that #WhoAreYouBlowingInTheJudgesBooth
trended all year long, in honor of.
But the helicopter didn’t crash, Albee didn’t die and the drone
was sent to a watery grave. All fine and good but why the trouble?
In a story on drone fan site PetaPixel the
reasoning is explained.
According to a tipster that wrote in to PetaPixel, the WSL
is really, really protective of their events and of the
intellectual property that might be derived from them; hence, the
strong arm approach to what the tipster says was a DJI Mavic drone
that decided to drop in on the event.
Tipster Andrew Grose told the publication, “Like most
sporting organizations the World Surf League (WSL) has been known
to be quite protective in terms of its intellectual property
rights…This is especially with regard to its copyright laws, making
professional filming or photographing within contest areas almost
impossible unless directly contracted by the WSL.”
Am I the only one that finds the World Surf League’s
intellectual property hilarious?
Yeah?
Ok. I’ll be at the bar ordering another.