Re: showing rental videos

[John Ruttner <jruttner@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 24, 2004, at 4:05 PM, Deg Farrelly wrote:

> Not much grey here at all... the law is quite specific....
>
> http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#110
>
> It is not an infringement of copyright to:
>
> Display
> by faculty or students
> in face-to-face teaching
> in a nonprofit educational institution
> in a classroom (or similar place devoted to instruction)
> legal copy
>
>
>
> deg farrelly, Associate Librarian
> Media / Communication Studies / Women's Studies
> Arizona State University West
> P.O. Box 37100
> Phoenix, Arizona  85069-7100
> Phone:  602.543.8522
>
>
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 15:07:19 -0600
>> From: "Roegge, Kathleen" <Roegge.Kathleen@xxxxxxx>
>> Subject: showing rental videos
>>
>> Hi,
>> 	This has always been a gray area to me.  Can an instructor show a
>> commercial film , the title of the film is Trainspotting, that they 
>> have
>> rented from a local video store in a college auditorium to their 
>> class?
>> What types of restrictions need to be in place or do they need to ask 
>> for
>> permission from the film's distributor to show it?
>>
>> Kathleen Roegge
>> Access Services Manager
>> University of Illinois at Springfield
>> Brookens Library
>> kroeg1@xxxxxxx
>>
>>
>
Actually, I think it is a whole lot grayer than Deg is suggesting.... 
other clauses of the act  -- e.g. #107 make it clear that the specifics 
of the use can and will effect the interpretation of  copyright. 
Specifically, the proportion of use - i.e. are you showing excerpts or 
the whole thing, and if the former, which ones, will you be showing it 
repeatedly, and, perhaps most important, are you preventing the 
distributor from realizing otherwise expected profits i.e. "the effect 
of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted 
work."   All of the above can - and have - been used by a distributor 
to  argue against the classroom use of his material. Disney Co. is the 
example par excellence, but there are others. The area is not clear at 
all.  A commercially available and well-known film like Trainspotting 
is a toss-up and it would not be a safe assumption that a rented video 
could be shown in entirety in a classroom without a release.

John Ruttner
Instructional Designer
Office of Distributed Learning
California State University San Bernardino