Educators are allowed to show videos and DVDs in their class, as long as these rules are followed:
"17 U.S.C. § 110(1) permits “the performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction….” It applies to showing of entire films, and also to those that involve less extensive clips from one or several sources" (ALA, 2009).
Streaming Services
It is prohibited to show most videos from a personal streaming account (Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, etc.) because of their Terms of Service that you agree to when you sign up.
Netflix does give classroom instructors the option to stream Original Netflix Documentaries in the classroom. Here is how to access them:
1. Navigate to: http://media.netflix.com
2. Use the search box to locate the documentary you wish to screen
3. Click on your selected title, locate the film's Synopsis, and ensure that it contains the "GRANT OF PERMISSION FOR EDUCATIONAL SCREENING" notice. If it does not contain this notice, the title is NOT eligible for classroom screening.
Learn more and browse documentaries: https://videolibrarian.com/articles/lists/netflix-documentaries-that-are-available-for-educational-scr/
YouTube
If a video is freely available on YouTube, then displaying such a video in an educational class is acceptable, provided that it is played live from the Internet and is not an illegally-obtained copy. Please see the Fair Use Guidelines.
Other Online Videos
As long as instructors are following the basic guidelines for showing videos in the classroom, online videos can be shown. Please see the Fair Use Guidelines.
TEACH Act
The TEACH Act (Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2002) was signed into law in November, 2002.
This law allows instructors to use works that are protected by copyright (most works other than US government publications) in digital teaching settings without first obtaining permission from the copyright owner. This includes materials prepared for students in distance learning courses.
In order to qualify to use copyrighted materials under the TEACH Act, several conditions must be satisfied:
Faculty Responsibilities:
Content adapted from Cornell University under CC BY-NC 4.0.
A widely-recognized (winner of Emmy Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, and an Academy Award nomination, among others) documentary series focused on American History. It offers full-length films, film clips, and digital shorts.
American Memory, Library of Congress
Films and videos covering a wide range of topics including American music, film, and Civil Rights, in the Library of Congress Digital Collections.
Multimedia resources for K-12 teachers with an emphasis on student learning and on professional development.
The Civil Rights Digital Library
Archival moving images, reference resources and instructional resources for educators.
Educational documentaries covering a wide range of topics and presented from varying points of view, organizing by category and searchable by frequency of use.
A non-profit site dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures. In its "Rights" section, it notes that the film makers have given permission to stream their work for users to watch free of charge on their home computers, but that for other permissions, i.e., downloading, using the footage in other projects or videos, or projecting the streams in a classroom or institution, the user should apply to Folkstreams or to the filmmaker, whose film may available as a high quality DVD from a distributor.
"The Forum Network is a public media service that makes freely-available hundreds of video and audio lectures from scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policymakers, and community leaders. Major support is provided by The Lowell Institute, an organization created to carry out the 1836 bequest of John Lowell Jr., to make free public lectures available to the citizens of Boston and beyond."
A PBS documentary series with a focus on investigative journalism regarding contemporary issues in American Society.
Internet Archive, Moving Image Archive Almost 6,000,000 titles available to download or view, including feature films (predominantly older titles), news media, and television programs/clips/commercials. Search is intuitive but not advanced.
National Film Board of Canada Access to a broad range of films, documentaries, and their amazing animations. The site also includes 65 subjects for broad search capability and a brief collection of curated clips for the classroom. You can find use Advanced search on the institutional web site, but it is not linked back to the online collection.
NOVA, PBS. Excellent source of educational videos on a range of topics, from Arts and Culture to Drama and Food. Create a free account to expand your viewing options.
POV, PBS "POV (a cinema term for “point of view”) is television’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 500 films to public television audiences across the country. POV films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues."
Open Video Project (UNC Chapel Hill) "The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Researchers can use the video to study a wide range of problems, such as tests of algorithms for automatic segmentation, summarization, and creation of surrogates that describe video content; the development of face recognition algorithms; or creating and evaluating interfaces that display result sets from multimedia queries." https://open-video.org/index.php
TED Talks "TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 110 languages." Provocative, often brilliant, many presentations can serve as a launch for serious class discussion.
Wikipedia Commons "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language." Drill down through the links to search by category.
YouTube YouTube is a video sharing service that allows users to watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own. Search is simple, you can subscribe to channels that you like, or save sites for viewing later. To filter your results for material with a CC BY Creative Commons license, click on Filter when you get your search results and select "Creative Commons" under Features. Most material is free but others you can buy or rent, or watch for free if you don't mind the ads.
Content adapted from the University at Albany under CC BY-NC 4.0.
