Week 2- Commentary on Tamika's post

Fair Use is a touchy issue in schools, especially in my role as the library media specialist.  My principal recently approached me about beginning a school movie night.  Ouch!  I thought.  How in the world can we get away with this without breaking copyright laws?  As usual I go to the media specialist listserv to get the opinions of the other "library ladies" and few men in our district.  I was directed to a site that sells movie licenses for school use which protects our school from lawsuits.  Another media specialist told me that it's okay as long as the parents stay with the students.  My thoughts went to all the movies we show during the last few days of school. We certainly do not have parents with our 850+ students so are we breaking the law?  Indeed we are.  I found a couple of interesting websites for Fair Use Guidelines for Education Media and Intellectual Property- read them and tell me what you think. 

Hmm, I wonder if it is worth my sanity to delve into the Disney debate?  Probably not.


My answer:

It is not worth your sanity to delve into the Disney debate. Disney is very protective about their copyrights and they are most likely to slap your fingers (or worse) for using their movies for movie night. I did have a great awakening on this subject. I too was curious about using movies as a school. I looked at the back of a video and it mentioned that a particular movie could not be used in a large setting. So "movie night" may have to be scrapped unless you carry a license for the particular movie that you wanted to show. It's like having movies in a public place for a sleepover... using movies that you own may not be something that can be used in a public place. Good luck trying to find something. Try Discovery learning but stay away from Disney!

March 12, 2011 10:18 AM