Showing a Library-provided Film (DVD, online streaming video, etc.) to a Class
Showing a library-provided film or a personal copy of a film in a class is covered under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. The material presented should be directly related to the course and for officially registered students only.
DVDs and Physical Media
Some physical DVDs in the library's collection are purchased with public performance rights (PPR). To identify if a DVD has PPR, look at the "Details" section of the full record in RaptorSearch. If PPR are available, there will be a note for Terms Governing Use and Reproduction that indicates "Public performance rights for education granted; no admission fees permitted" or something similar.
Streaming Videos
All videos on BBC Shakespeare Plays, Docuseek2, and Films on Demand come with public performance rights.
For Academic Video Online Premium, PPR is available for all videos except those produced by FILM PLATFORM or National Theatre.
To determine PPR availability for Kanopy videos, you either need to click on “See More” for a film and then look for the “PPR” icon or do a search and then limit the result to “PPR Available”.
In all above cases where public performance rights are available, no admission fees can be charged and, while it may not be specifically required by each platform, it’s better to assume that advertising to non-MC affiliated users is not permitted, even if restricting attendance to MC-users isn’t required.
What Do I Do If We Don't Have Public Performance Rights for a Film I Want to Use?
If we don't have performance rights, you must contact the copyright holder to obtain them. Individuals and organizations are responsible for obtaining performance rights for library-owned films.
