I realize that we aren’t lawyers but I’m wondering what the general thoughts in the field are about copyright and sharing videos in blended and online courses. I’m finding that around our state there are different rules on different campuses. If an instructor is teaching a film class and students need to watch complete movies some campuses find it OK to do this as long as the films are behind the protection of a CMS login. Other campuses are not. On some campuses it is OK to show the film during class across a classroom-based videoconferencing network where students as a group in a classroom on multiple campuses are able to see the film at the same time.

What does your campus agree to be the legal policy around this? As more courses are shared across institutions how do you show/share full-length films with your students? These are not films that are available on Netflix, they are films from other countries that have been purchased by an institution and previously made available locally to students in the language lab and/or local classroom viewing.

I appreciate your thoughts on this.

Lauren