UCLA Profs Banned From Posting Course Videos

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "As of Winter Quarter 2010, UCLA professors will no longer be able to post videos on their course websites. Although they've long relied upon fair use protections for educational use, the Association for Information Media and Equipment has made claims that they're copyright infringers, even though the videos are only available on campus and the students are allowed to watch the videos in the Instructional Media Lab. Even though they believe their use of the materials to be fair, the UCLA has decided to back down rather than face litigation. Many professors have commented that this will hurt students, because they now have to watch all videos at the IML, which isn't open on weekends, forcing students to try to fit assigned videos between classes."

Comments

To clarify:

[Anonymous Coward]

They are NOT talking about videos of the courses

The ban applies to videos assigned by professors for students to watch.

Previously these could be streamed and watched at student's leisure. Now they have to go to the media lab to watch them.

Not nearly as bad as the summary sounds

[RingDev]

This isn't about a recording of a lecture that gets posted, this is about copyright protected videos that a professor shows during a lecture being posted.

So under this threat, a professor that shows "Steamboat Willy" in a class can not post "Steamboat Willy" onto the more accessible distribution system.

-Rick

Re:Summary Is Confusing or Erroneous

[reg106]

The summary is *very* confusing. In fact, TFA is very confusing. From the first few paragraphs, it is easy to misinterpret the videos in question to be recordings of lectures, but that is not the case. After reading the whole article, it is clear that the courses under consideration require students to view movies, produced by some external content-provider, outside of the class. They watch the *whole* movie, not just a part, so educational use alone isn't enough to trigger fair use. (Otherwise we'd all just use photocopied textbooks)

When you buy a DVD, it has an implicit license to the conditions under which you can watch it (That FBI warning at the beginning indicating you can't show it to a large audience). To comply with copyright law, an "instructional" DVD which permits showing to an audience is required. I am only aware of this because our design course shows the Nightline "Deep Dive" video. If you look at the educational version (checkbox), it allows you to show to a group, but NOT to stream it. In order to stream the content, a difference license for the video would be required. I'm not sure how to get such a license right now, and this will be inconvenient for a few semesters worth of Bruins, but as demand for streamed instruction content grows, I'm sure viable licensing options will arise (as we have seen for music and popular video content).

Re:Summary Is Confusing or Erroneous

[networkBoy]

Fair use still applies to the whole movie:

US Code Title17, Chapter1, ss107 is crystal clear:

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.

-nB