Q: A teacher asked me to buy a commercial movie that was relevant to her curriculum. In going to the website where the movie was sold, I found that there is a home use version for $24.95 and an educational version (with a site license) for $149.95. The website is quite emphatic about the fact that the home version cannot be used for educational purposes, even though the information in the 5th edition of Copyright for Schools seems to contradict this, as long as the teacher is following the usual fair use guidelines. Can I purchase the home use version for the teacher to use?

A: My advice still holds if you actually purchase the movie. But from what you have reported, I will bet that the company is not selling you the movie; they are licensing it to you. This is a disturbing trend in movies, and you can learn more in an article that I wrote: “An ILL Wind: Libraries and the Interlibrary Loan of Audiovisual Materials,” SMU Sci. Tech. Law Review 11 (Winter 2007): 163-194. When you get a license, you only get permission to do what the license says. And it appears they are saying that the home use version can’t be used at school. That is not a copyright issue; it is a contract issue and it trumps copyright law.

PARODY VS. SATIRE

Q: A group of students created a video using a song by a famous band. They wrote their own lyrics to the song and created a video to go with it. They posted it to YouTube and want us to post the video on the district website. Is this a violation of copyright? The kids added, “The lyrics have been changed to reflect our school culture and spirit, and offer no challenge to any copyrights held by any individual or organization.”

A: Changing the lyrics of a song involves the right to create derivative works, a right reserved by the copyright owner. Students have considerable leeway to use the works of others (appropriately credited, of course) in their own learning products in school or for private use at home. What the students did, within the context of a class project, is almost certainly fair. But once they leave the classroom, their educational exemptions contract. The right of distribution and the right of digital distribution of sound recordings are also reserved rights of a copyright owner, and by putting the song (with the new lyrics) on the Internet via YouTube, the students have usurped those rights. The students posting on YouTube may also be in violation of the YouTube terms of service, but the school will not be responsible since the school didn’t post the video. Even though “publication” may be an educational goal, publication does not have to be worldwide to be educational. The publication can be on an intranet, or to just another classroom to satisfy the learning objective. So you may want to rethink posting the student video on the district’s open website, but you could certainly justify a more limited distribution of the video to a smaller audience for a limited time. The smaller the audience and the shorter the time period would enhance a fair use defense for posting the student video.

You haven’t explained what the use of the song was for. If the students changed the words of the song to make fun of the song (parody), the use may be completely fair outside of the educational context. But if the students used the song for a totally different purpose, the use may be satire, and satire is not as well recognized as a fair use. You would need to go through the four factor fair use assessment to know for sure. The disclaimer has absolutely no legal significance, and though it may make the students feel better about their use, they should not rely on it for any protection for their use of the song.

COPYING TEXTBOOKS

Q: An administrator recently told me, “If you have a textbook for each student and you copy for classroom or student use, and the copies stay in the classroom, you are not violating copyright laws.” I think he was referring to copying the entire textbook for classroom use. This seems to go against everything I know about copyright law. Am I missing something?

A: The guidelines for classroom copying say that making multiple copies of a chapter of a book for classroom use is fair. In addition, schools can copy from materials they have on order. So, for example, if you have two more students than you have books, you may copy materials from the textbook for those two students, one chapter at a time, as long as you have ordered the books. You may make the copies until the purchased copies arrive. The copies must vest with the students. But if the purpose is to avoid buying a copy for each student by only purchasing a classroom set of books and then photocopying the books for the students to have their own copies of the classroom set, I would say that a fair use analysis does not support that plan. You are copying for a nonprofit educational purpose, but your copying is rote—a wash on factor one. The work you are copying is creative (factor two against you) and you are copying all of it (factor three against you). You are making copies that would take the place of legitimate copies of the work (factor four is against you). So I would not recommend this practice.

Every effort is made to provide accurate, up to date information in response to copyright questions. However, this column is not intended to take the place of legal advice. For more information, consult your school district’s attorney.