October 2003 — Industry Perspective
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Are You Breaking the Law?
U.S. Copyright Law, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 (www.copyright.gov/title17) provides guidelines for fair use: "The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." The copyright law lists four characteristics teachers should know to determine copyright infringement:
1. The purpose and character of use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Streaming video is not much different than using a VHS player and TV monitor in that you are publicly distributing video through your computer monitor. Unless the copyright owner has given special permission, digital video may only be used for instructional purposes in the confines of a classroom, library or auditorium. Instructional purposes would include research, demonstration, comment, criticism and news reporting (Lutkzer and Rapp 2002).
You may not use the video in a public performance - whether or not you are charging admission - and you also may not redistribute the content or alter the digital video in any way. Altering includes removing sounds, adding or changing images, or using the video in editing software. Check your subscription license agreement, because the owner of the video may or may not give permission for using the digital video in Web pages or other multimedia projects and/or for distance learning.
The TEACH Act
The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act, aka the TEACH Act, was passed in November 2002. The purpose of this act is to support the changing trends in teaching - especially distance learning. You may have noticed that some free and subscription-streaming services only allow you to stream their content. The reasons for this are many, but one reason is to have control over the distribution of the content. In addition, there are other companies that provide the ability to download videos.
There are several advantages to this, but many implications and questions still exist surrounding archiving and redistribution rights such as whether or not you can archive a copy of a digital video for classroom use. The answer is: it depends. The best solution is to review your license. According to an interpretation of the TEACH Act by Kenneth Crews (2002), professor of law at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, the new TEACH Act allows one archived copy to be maintained, but it cannot be available on the Internet once a course is finished. You may find that the license gives your district greater flexibility in some instances than the TEACH Act.
DRM Software
To address the needs of teachers and students regarding the use of video clips in a variety of ways through Microsoft PowerPoint lessons, projects, electronic reports and other such applications, it is necessary to allow for the downloading and storage of video. But, many schools and libraries do not have sufficient bandwidth to allow for acceptable video streaming quality. Applications that provide downloading at night when schools are not in session eliminate the bandwidth issue.
