Copyright Confusion

The more I think about copyright, and in particular the use of video in schools, the more confused I get. I know enough to know that it's complicated and that I don't understand it. This post is therefore an exploration of my ignorance and I'd be grateful to anyone who can shed any light: preferably by referring me to trustworthy sources of information that can be understood by non-lawyers!

Copyright is for Losers
Originally uploaded by 917press

Using YouTube
The genesis of this post came from a series of exchanges on Twitter prompted by David Noble asking for an easy way to download YouTube videos. There are a few ways to do this and I sent him a link to this javascript solution which I think is one of the easiest: Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files. However, just because you can downloading the video doesn't mean that you should... or that it's legal to do so.

I asked: YouTube/Copyright is tricky. If it's OK to watch YouTube online in school, is it OK to download and show to get around blocked YT?

Clearly, this is a naive view of copyright, but it feels right. If there are no copyright issues in watching it online (a big if I'll grant you) it seems sensible that you should be able to watch it offline too. Sensible perhaps but legal? Probably not. The problem is, you are making a copy of something without the express permission of the copyright holder. (Implied permission is not sufficient according to the Intellectual Property Rights guru in the university.)

Showing Movies
Even assuming you are not making a copy, or using a pirated copy that someone else has made, you could still be in trouble. Just because you have legally purchased a legit copy of a film on DVD, it doesn't necessarily mean you can show it in school. A typical warning at the start of a film says something like:

"Warning: The copyright proprietor has licensed the programme ... for private home use only. Unless otherwise expressly licensed by the copyright proprietor, all other rights are reserved. Use in other locations such as airlines, clubs, coaches, hospitals, hotels, oil rigs, prisons, schools and ships is prohibited unless expressly authorized by the copyright proprietor. ...Any such action establishes liability for a civil action and may give rise to criminal prosecution."

Goodness knows what would happen if you were showing a DVD while taking a school club on a coach and ferry trip to a prison hospital based on an oil rig! Showing the film in school is specifically prohibited and yet legal, commercially purchased DVDs are shown in schools day and daily. Is the copyright law an ass or are we just choosing to ignore it because it suits us to do so?

I know that my dentist pays an annual fee to an industry body so that he can play music in his surgery. Does a similar arrangement exist to allow schools to play commercial DVDs? Even if an arrangement like that exists, is it possible to extend it to something like YouTube where, instead of a few major film/TV producers and a manageable number of independent companies, you have hundreds of thousands of individuals all posting material? I suspect it isn't.

Back to YouTube
A look around YouTube's help section reveals a General Copyright Inquiries: Permission to use videos? page. It says "The rights to any screen shots or footage of third party content on our site are not ours to grant. You would need to follow up with the individual content owners regarding the rights to this footage.", which seems fairly clear. However, Theo directed us to the Terms of Use page where to my mind, things get muddier. He specifically directed us to section 11.2 which says: "YouTube Content may not be downloaded, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purpose whatsoever without the prior written consent of YouTube, or YouTube's licensors. YouTube reserves all rights not expressly granted in and to the YouTube Content." That seems clear but to my non-legal mind, it contradicts section 10.2 B: "When you upload or post a User Submission to YouTube, you grant: ... B. to each user of the Website, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, licence to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions to the extent permitted by the functionality of the Website and under these Terms." It's the bit that I've highlighted in bold that confuses me. Undoubtedly, it makes sense to a copyright lawyer but to me, 10.2 says I have a licence to reproduce it but 11.2 says I can't reproduce it. Eh!? I guess it's something to do with the "to the extent permitted by the functionality of the Website" bit.

Of course it gets even worse when YouTube users post something that may not be entirely theirs to publish, for example some of the Lip Dub stuff I referred to in a previous post - their video but someone else's music. Potentially an educationally valuable experience but one that is scuppered as soon as you start worrying about copyright.

No Conclusions
Our brief flurry of activity on Twitter spluttered to a halt with the comments: "It's a tightrope, Spud" from Alan and "...there is sniff of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle about the issue of copyright in ed >how many schools prosecuted?" from John. Not an entirely satisfactory conclusion to either the Twitter conversation or to this (very rambling) post. I'm back where I started - confused.

Questions:

1. Is there a simple to understand guide for teachers that addresses some of these issues? What can I do and what can't I do? What are the risks and what are the benefits?
   
2. Would it confuse things even further if YouTube was to promote Creative Commons licences for videos the way Flickr does with photographs? (See Free to use... with Flickr.)
   

TeachMeet Borders: Part II

Stuart Meldrum talked about a pupil who broke a collar bone and couldn't write or do the normal work in the technology classroom. SO he planned on the computer and then presented his results on Animoto.

Theo talked about Flickr Commons. Showed some of the Library of congress photos that was added to Flickr. Showed how people added important information to the library photos. National Gallery of Scotland also have added stuff and showed how you can take teh images into Picnik and overlaid old photo of Edinburgh with new image from same place. Used transparency control to fade between the two images. Gave an impassioned plea for more things to be made available through Creative Commons Licences. Also talked about the collaborative work and gave the TeachMeet Borders Spotify list as an example.

Andy McSwan - The Cool Wall
Originally uploaded by troutcolor

David Gilmour then talked about the East Lothian experiment with NetBooks. His argument was the hardware is now less important than the network. Some information on One Net Book Per Child blog. They wanted somewhere to store things online and so used Google Apps but used an education bit of it. Makes it easy for schools/university to create collaborative areas for people to share documents.

Andy McSwan did an excellent nano presentation on the Cool Wall in his Computing class. This is a stunningly simple idea but a brilliant way to help classes consider aspcts of your subject. Just set up a Cool Wall and the pupils will start scanning the press and the web for examples - enjoying the hunt but learning about the topic in the process.