Educators and Copyright

What should educators know about copyright?

CSI story - What’s in a Name?
by Mike Byrnes
In the beginning, after deciding our anti-plagiarism video would be a crime scene/hospital story, we decided a good title for it would be CSI: Yavapai.  In the spirit of best practice and to follow good faith behavior, we thought it best to seek permission to use the CSI title.  So I called CBS Headquarters in New York.  After being passed around a couple offices in NY, I was told the CSI franchise was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and I should contact his office in LA.  When I called Jerry Bruckheimer’s office, they said I needed to talk to somebody at CBS.  Argh!  I was given a contact at CBS Television.  After being transferred to a couple more offices at CBS—and after two months from my initial call to CBS Headquarters—I finally contacted somebody who could give me an answer.  Unfortunately, the answer was “No.”
      I told CBS we would give them credit for allowing the use of the CSI name and it would be good P.R. for them to be associated with an anti-plagiarism video.   CBS said they did not want to “. . . water down the CSI mark.”
      In the end, we went with the title Diagnosis: Plagiarism.  Hopefully, after seeing the finished product, CBS will be inclined to work with us in the future and not see our efforts as “watering down their mark.”

Streaming Media Quandary
by Thatcher Bohrman
An instructor had been showing their face-to-face classes a certain video for nearly a decade. They owned the video on VHS tape, and now wanted to stream the entire 20-minute program to her online classes. The program was created by a company whose business is primarily corporate training media, and the cost of similar products from this company averages $500-1000 for the physical media (a DVD), and does not necessarily include the rights to stream it in any case.

SIMPLIFIED FAIR USE ANALYSIS
Factor 1 (purpose): it's an educational use, but whether it is tranformative - a strong argument for fair use - is unclear. While the video is highly creative, it is not a dramatic work, so factor 2 (nature) weighs in favor of fair use. Factor 3 (Amount) weighs against because the entire work would be streamed, instead of "reasonable and limited portions". The fact that the company markets media to education weighs against a fair use according to 110(2) from The Copyright Act, and it may impact the market (factor 4 - effect) in that one fewer copy would be sold.

Although the instructor concluded for themselves that their use favored fair use, they also imagined that asking permission would result in a denial, which felt wrong. Despite the fear of being denied (and its possible repercussions), it has been established by the US Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (1994) that “being denied permission to use a work does not weigh against a finding of fair use". Even if a rights-holder stipulates needing a license to use their work, it may still be a fair use under the proper circumstances.