In an educational institution, we make extensive use of the Fair Use Doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Law to allow us to use excerpts of copyrighted material for educational purposes and the courts have upheld this as Fair Use. However, the Fair Use Doctrine (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html) clearly limits us to “…reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson…”.
Copying entire videos onto a Mediasite recorder would be a violation of U.S. Copyright law, even though only registered students can get to it. Those students could share the video with non-registered students.
Other ways to share videos was reviewed in a previous blog http://blog.ecu.edu/sites/merendaj/2009/09/30/it-can-happen-to-you-too/
I’ve talked with people here at ECU who think that educational institutions get a bye on copyright law. Well, to be very un-grammatical, It Ain’t So. The Fair Use doctrine gives us a lot of power to use copyrighted materials but it’s not a bullet-proof shield. Be sure to apply it correctly.
Another dimension of this is the difference between use of copyrighted material in a face-to-face classroom versus distributing it to distance students via “digital transmission.” I use quotes because that phrase (“digital transmission”) is pervasive in the text of the law. You can do many things in a face-to-face classroom that you can’t do if you transmit material over the internet.
I am currently writing a document that will outline the differences. Look for it soon on the OET’s web page. We’ll send out an e-mail when it’s ready.