Thursday, March 24, 2011

Copyright Laws Prevent Students From Learning

A group of freshman and sophomore students contacted me this semester with an initiative to organize a Spanish club. They love Spanish and want to get together to engage in language-related activities. One of the things they planned is a Movie Night. They want to get together every couple of weeks, watch a movie in Spanish, and discuss it afterwards.

And then the students discovered that copyright laws prevent them from engaging in this educational activity. In order to organize a single movie watching session, they'd have to fill out a stack of paperwork and pay several thousand dollars. Which means, of course, that there will be no Movie Night.

I know I wrote about this before but it just makes me angry to see such a great student initiaive crushed because of some ridiculous laws that make absolutely no sense.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't know that was the stand of things in the US. Is it fear of a raid that prevent this from happening? or is it that the University forbid it on the same grounds? Excuse my ignorance of the situation.

I thought this was a simple as not saying anything about it. I thought the ultrastrict sense of the copyright notice was never really enforced, particularly when it was for non-for-profit purposes.

Clarissa said...

Recently, this kind of an infraction was discovered at a university in Ohio and there was huge trouble. So now nobody wants to take the initiative and find out what the repercussions will be. Nobody wants to pay huge fines for this.

Leah Jane said...

I recently organized a screening of a couple of popular films about autism for my school's neurodiversity club, and we had to jump through many hoops with the different studios to get it done, and set us back financially quite a bit. We had the good fortune of having enough money to pay for that, but not so many other student groups are as lucky. What a sad story for public discourse and shared learning.

Anonymous said...

Even if the screening is free and for pedagogical purposes?
Ol.

Pen said...

We watch movies in and out of school all the time, without having to jump through hoops. So why do these students have to do it? Does it have something to do with the fact that they're an official club? If so, then why don't the clubs at high schools have to go through the same hoops when showing movies?

Clarissa said...

It turns out that "for pedagogic purposes" means that a film has to be scheduled during a class time, listed on a syllabus, and offered in the classroom that course is scheduled to be given in.

I have no idea how this whole things works for high schools.

Pen said...

It can't work the same way for high schools: quite a few history, and some of the upper-level language classes, show movies after school hours. I find this contrast between school levels very strange.

My solution would be to watch the movies anyway, but just as a group of people. If that's illegal, then a great many people would get arrested for watching movies with large groups of friends and/or family members. Is that an option?

Amanda said...

The students should be able to watch it on their own time, out of class though, with no issues-- the same way it's legal for a group of friends to watch films together. They just can't have a huge screen set up, i think? Not sure, though.

Clarissa said...

The students can surely get together off campus to watch the movies. Our problem, however, is that the majority of our students commute to campus. They don't all live in the same place. So organizing a meeting off campus will be extremely hard. Especially if you want several dozen people to attend.

Amanda said...

Ah, that makes a difference-- my college was residential, so it wasn't too hard for a group to take over a dorm lobby tv for the night.

Dame Eleanor Hull said...

Could you organize an extra-mural, no-credit "class" for students in this club? I suppose maybe then they'd have to pay for it, which would not be so good. But possibly your External Programming people could suggest a way to do this.

Izgad said...

I say show the movie and let them dare try to come after you. Think how bad a company would look in the press for trying to prosecute a teacher for using their film to teach.

Neil Gaiman has the right idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI. He talks about how much he as an author has benefited from illegal downloading.

Clarissa said...

At this point, the problem is that nobody would give us the room. When we tell people what we want to do in that room, they act as if we'd confessed to planning sex orgies and boozefests in there.

NancyP said...

I think that you need to check with other local universities. All sorts of films are screened at uni - and I would bet that the episode at that Ohio uni involved a big Hollywood production. I find it hard to believe that some Spanish-language production company is going to trounce all over you for showing their movie* - at the moment, the USA is not a major market for re-releases of Spanish language films of the art-house variety. It's not worth the lawyer's fees for a company to pursue a free viewing by 20 people. They'd be better off sending a lawyer's letter demanding that you play x minutes of their trailers per movie viewing.

*excepting Almovodar's production company